HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


ENGLISH STORIES 




































































































































































































































































































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THE HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


ENGLISH STORIES 


EDITED BY 


EDWARD EVERETT HALE, Jr., Ph.D. 

H 

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN UNION COLLEGE 



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GLOBE SCHOOL BOOK COMPANY 

NEW YORK AND CHICAGO 




LIBRARY of CONGRESS 




Two Copies Received 

DEC 30 1903 

Copyright Entry 
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CLASS O' XXc. No. 
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1 COPY S V 


Copyright, 1903, by 

Globe School Book Company. 

M. P. I 


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MANHATTAN PRESS 
474 WEST BROADWAY 
NEW YORK 

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CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Introduction . ^ .v 

A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens . . 1 

The House and the Brain, by E. Bulwer Lytton 07 

A Dog of Flanders, by Ouida .... 130 

The Sire de Maletroit’s Door, by Robert Louis 

Stevenson. 188 


Wee Willie Winkie, by Rudyard Kipling . 


223 





























































































































INTRODUCTION 


It has been sometimes said that the short story 
is an especially American form of literature, — 
that Hawthorne and Poe were the first to show 
what could be done in a few pages of narra¬ 
tive, and that while other nations have certainly 
produced masterpieces, Henry James and Bret 
Harte are still equal in their kind to any one else. 
Without trying to settle any such question as 
this, — there are first-rate short stories in every 
language, — it may be said that we do not find 
many fine short stories in English literature until 
almost our own day. In the eighteenth century 
there were not a few tales, but they had, as a rule, 
few of the qualities that we have got used to 
considering as essential to a really fine short story. 
Sir Walter Scott’s “Wandering Willie’s Tale” in 
“ Redgauntlet ” gives us a good notion of what 
the old-fashioned tale was. It is a story told 
around rather a slight basis, much like “The 
Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” 1 and quite unlike the 
more carefully worked-out stories of Hawthorne 
or Poe, or of Stevenson or Kipling lately, with 
their definite effect and their harmony of artistic 


1 See “American Stories,” p. ix. 


VI 


INTRODUCTION 


effort. In writing of short stories in another vol¬ 
ume in this series, 1 we said that the short story 
had one dominant motive or idea, and that to 
present this idea was the chief purpose of the 
author, and added that this motive would be of 
various kinds. In the older tale this motive was 
generally the story itself; but sometimes even the 
story was of slight importance, merely an oppor¬ 
tunity for the play of thought and sentiment, and 
in this respect not unlike the essay. The modern 
story has a much more definite idea; the story is 
rarely told for itself alone. Sometimes its motive 
is a true idea, as in a good many of Hawthorne’s 
stories, an idea of which the substance could almost 
be put in a shorter, more definite statement. 
Sometimes it is the development of some thought, 
some theory, some intellectual process we might 
say, as in a detective story, or “ The Gold Bug ” of 
Poe. Sometimes, of course, its motive is but an 
incident, an adventure, attractive in itself and 
illustrative of manners and life. It is often the 
development of some quaint or interesting char¬ 
acter, often it is a pure situation, in some set of 
circumstances, that is, in which the deep and 
human feeling of the characters is brought forth. 

Of all these different developments of the idea 
of the short story later English literature has good 
examples. The development of ideas was the con- 


1 “American Stories,” p. xi. 


INTRODUCTION 


Vll 


stant occupation of Charles Dickens. Although 
his mind was always busy with character, humor, 
plot, yet he had power left for some generous 
thought which would be for the good of men. 
So his novels very often have some radical or 
reformatory purpose in them; “ Bleak House ” 
is an arraignment of the interminable processes of 
the Court of Chancery, “ Little Dorrit” of the red 
tape of government service and the misery of the 
debtor's prison, “Hard Times” of the hypocritical 
hardness of the business man. Dickens generally 
had some idea in mind, and his way was to embody 
it in a story. 

Of these stories none are more characteristic of 
Dickens than his Christmas stories. They repre¬ 
sent in various forms the ideas that were at the 
bottom of his simple philosophy of life. They are 
not novels, but then they are not exactly short 
stories, because they are not very short. They 
were written to be published as Christmas books; 
a novel like the rest of Dickens’s would have been 
too long, a true short story too short. So they are 
hardly short stories in the true sense of the word. 
But they are built up on the plan of the short 
story; each is the presentation of some single 
idea generally at considerable length and in some 
detail of illustration. It happens that one of 
them, however, is better suited to our purpose. 
The “ Christmas Carol ” was the first and most 
popular of these stories, and Dickens had frequent 


INTRODUCTION 


viii 

requests to read it in public. It was too long, 
however, for one reading, and therefore Dickens 
omitted enough to bring it within the limits of 
an evening’s reading. The result is that we have 
something of about the length of many a short 
story. 

The omissions and changes that Dickens made 
in the “ Christmas Carol ” were of two kinds, 
first those by which he made the story shorter 
without changing the representation of the idea, 
and, second, those that he made with a view to 
reading the story aloud. An example of the first 
is the omission in Stave First of everything re¬ 
lating to Marley’s chain; in the original story 
Marley had a chain about his Avaist made of 
“cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds,, and 
heavy purses wrought in steel.” Dickens plays 
on the idea that the attention paid in life to 
material things hangs as a clog on the soul in 
death; when Scrooge looks out of the window he 
sees many phantoms wearing chains like Marley’s 
Ghost, especially “ one old ghost in a white waist¬ 
coat with a monstrous iron safe attached to his 
ankle.” All this Dickens omitted for reading, 
and probably the story is the better for it; the 
idea was a little beside the point, the humor was a 
little thin, the idea of the story is as strong without 
it. Other omissions of this kind are necessary, 
but not so good; some descriptions very charac¬ 
teristic of Pickens, some of the visions which the 


INTRODUCTION 


IX 


spirits show to Scrooge have to be omitted for 
want of space. Still the result strengthens the 
story on the whole; the impression is surer by 
being made in a manner more concise. 

The other set of omissions we have as a rule 
not retained in this edition. They are those that 
Dickens made with a view to effective reading. 
Thus in many paragraphs a phrase or two will be 
omitted, because in the dramatic way in which 
Dickens read they were unnecessary or even 
harmful to the effect. Thus phrases like “ said 
Scrooge ” are almost invariably left out. This 
kind of omission we restore, for in this edition 
one is to read the story not listen to it, and the 
reader who has not before him some one who is 
presenting the matter dramatically, appreciates 
little matters that to the hearer would be a 
hindrance. 

The “Christmas Carol,” then, in its shorter 
form gives us a story ordered and designed to 
carry out an idea. The awful result of closing 
one’s heart to human sympathy; the genial life 
diffused by those natures that readily reach out 
to join with others; Christmas time as the type 
of a life of love and good feeling. This is the 
thought that filled Dickens’s mind. To present 
it he took a fantastic form appropriate to the 
season of unrestrained jollity. The miser Scrooge 
is led here and there by beneficent Christmas 
spirits, and shown the evil of his own narrow, 


X 


INTRODUCTION 


enclosed life and the joy and delight of other 
lives which have for their aim not the mere ac¬ 
quisition of so much gold or other material wealth, 
but the coming into contact with the lives of 
others, to share their happiness and aid their dis¬ 
tress. To this end everything in the stor}^ is 
directed, even down to single words and little 
phrases. Whatever will make the life of Scrooge 
seem mean, sordid, and evil, whatever will make 
the Cratchits, the Fezziwigs, Scrooge’s nephew’s 
family seem joyous, happy, delightful, that finds 
its place in the story. Sometimes it is a descrip¬ 
tion, as that of the Spirit of Christmas Past and 
of Christmas morning on page 30; sometimes it 
is the incident, as in the contrasted accounts of 
Scrooge at school (p. 22) and of the Fezziwigs’ 
festivity (p. 25); sometimes it is a few words, 
as in the string of adjectives on page 2, and 
again on page 5; sometimes it is but a single 
word, as the repeated “ melancholy ” on page 9. 
Everything goes to strengthen the general effect. 
Not that this is a sermon. To the critical readers 
bent on searching out Dickens’s thoughts and 
Dickens’s methods, much seems readily to be 
here or there with this or that purpose, much 
seems to be the statement of an idea. But 
the uncritical reader will rarely think of these 
things, and Dickens as he wrote probably did 
not think of them. The idea worked itself out, 
as the saying is; the mind directed in one 


INTRODUCTION 


xi 


course, thought naturally of incident, description, 
phrase, and the story took the true form; it 
embodied in artistic form the thought which 
dominated its author. 

Somewhat different is our extract from Bulwer. 
The “Christmas Carol” is in some respects like 
“ The Great Stone Face ” by Hawthorne; each 
story is the presentation in various forms (and in 
different ways) of a moral idea. “The House and 
the Brain ” reminds us of Fitz-James O'Brien’s 
“Diamond Lens.” Each is a fantastic develop¬ 
ment of the scientific ideas of the time. The idea 
of a diamond lens is undoubtedly an impossibility, 
but not more than the influence of a secret cham¬ 
ber with vials of strange liquid. In each case 
the author had some conception arising from the 
scientific ideas of his day, and in each case he 
expressed himself in the form of a story, in each 
case telling of the most remarkable things as if 
they were the most simple occurrences. The story 
is interesting in itself, — probably the first part 
will remain longest in mind, — but when it was 
written it was undoubtedly the expression of the 
vague, mysterious conceptions that were so fasci¬ 
nating to Bulwer, as they have been to not a few 
after him. 

Something a little different have we in the story 
by Ouida, called “ A Dog of Flanders.” It is not 
precisely a story of any especial event, or rather 
it would be somewhat extended at the beginning 


Xll 


INTRODUCTION 


for such a story. It is really the presentation of 
a phase of life, the presentation in a very poignant 
form of the situation of the artistic nature in the 
midst of surroundings that cannot and will not 
understand it. In spite of the name of the story, 
Patrasclie is not the real hero, but Nello. And 
all else, the local color, as the artists call it, the 
quaint old atmosphere of the Flemish country, the 
characters in the story, even to the great honest 
dog himself, even in fact the pathetic ending, all 
these are means to effect the end, an end which 
any reader of the longer novels of the author will 
readily recognize. 

Robert Louis Stevenson was in love with ad¬ 
venture, and although he often wrote of other 
things and indeed thought seriously and earnestly 
of life, yet it was adventure at bottom which most 
attracted him and absorbed his mind. He did 
not care much where the adventure was, in the 
Scotland that he so loved, in some great city 
where the complex life was so fascinating, in the 
islands of the South Sea wherein he worked a sort 
of revival of romance, wherever it was, he loved 
the strange and stirring incident. But even Ste¬ 
venson’s stories are not stories wholly for them¬ 
selves alone, for he always wished also to give 
the spirit and character of the time and place, the 
romantic tone as one might say. Old France, the 
France of the time of Villon and Froissart, was 
one of his early delights, and in our story he gives 


INTRODUCTION 


xiii 

an adventure such as he might almost have found 
in the later pages of Brantome. 

Mr. Kipling is a man of such varied genius that 
it is not worth while to try to exemplify his man¬ 
ner as a story writer by any one story. His stories 
are of many kinds as they are of many subjects. 
“Wee Willie Winkie” is, however, as character¬ 
istic as any; it has what is called atmosphere and 
local color, as all Kipling’s Indian stories have; 
it has its exciting adventure as his stories very 
generally have; but neither of these things is the 
main point. The main point is the glimpse it 
gives us of the soul of that six-year-old “ child of 
a dominant race,” who was striving to be a man. 
Wee Willie Winkie, in spite of his childishness, 
— his child’s talk and his child’s tears, — was at 
bottom a man, the kind of man that, as Kipling 
likes to think, makes the British Empire, resolute 
in feeling for duty, indifferent to danger, decided 
in dealing with necessity, and by hook or crook 
successful. Such is the child, and such, in many 
of Kipling’s stories, is the man. This story merely 
gives us a glimpse, but in that glimpse we see 
clearly what is there. 

These stories are all alike in the one respect 
mentioned, that each seeks to make upon the 
reader one strong impression, a lesson, an idea, a 
situation, an incident, a character. But that very 
likeness should bring out to us more strongly the 
characteristic difference that there is between these 


XIV 


INTRODUCTION 


story-writers. Each one doubtless we should enjoy 
thoroughly as we read it, but as we look them 
over together we realize more surely the strong 
geniality of Dickens, the sentiment of mystery in 
Bulwer, the atmosphere of artistic feeling that 
Ouida loved, the stirring life of chivalry and 
sentiment in Stevenson, and the outspoken truth 
of Kipling. 




A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


BY CHARLES DICKENS 


STAVE ONE 
mauley’s ghost 

Mauley was dead, to begin with. There is 
no doubt whatever about that. The register of 
his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, 
the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge 
signed it. And Scrooge’s name was good upon 
’Change 1 for anything he chose to put his hand 
to. 

Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail. 

Scrooge knew he was dead ? Of course he did. 
I Tow could it be otherwise ? Scrooge and he 
were partners for I don’t know how many years. 
Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administra¬ 
tor, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his 
sole friend, and sole mourner. 

1 The Exchange or gathering place of merchants. Even in 
Addison’s time it was a regular expression. “I have been taken 
for a merchant upon the Exchange for above these ten years,” he 
says in the first number of the “ Spectator ” : “ English Essays, ” 
p. 70. In fact the Royal Exchange was founded in 1566. 

1 


B 



9 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


Scrooge never painted out Old Marley’s name. 
There it stood, years afterwards, above the ware¬ 
house door : Scrooge and Marley. The firm was 
known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes 
people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, 
and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both 
names. It was all the same to him. 

Oh ! but he was a tight-fisted hand at the . 
grindstone, Scrooge ! a squeezing, wrenching, 
grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! 

External heat and cold had little influence on 
Scrooge.- No warmth could warm, no wintry 
weather chill him. No wind that blew was bit¬ 
terer than he, no falling snow was more intent 
upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to en¬ 
treaty. Foul weather didn’t know where to have 
him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and 
sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in 
only one respect. They often “came down” 1 
handsomely, and Scrooge never did. 

Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, 
with gladsome looks, “ My dear Scrooge, how are 
you? When will you come to see me?” No 
beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no chil¬ 
dren asked him what it was o’clock, no man or 
woman ever once in all his life inquired the way 
to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the 
blind-men’s dogs appeared to know him ; and, 
when they saw him coming on, would tug their 

1 An old slang phrase for “ give something.” 


ENGLISH STORIES 


3 


owners into doorways and up courts ; and then 
would wag their tails as though they said, “No eye 
at all is better than an evil eye, dark master! ” 
But what did Scrooge care ? It was the very 
thing he liked. To edge his way along the 
crowded paths of life, warning all human sym¬ 
pathy to keep its distance, was what the knowing 
ones call “ nuts ” 1 to Scrooge. 

Once upon a time, — of all the good days in 
the year, on Christmas Eve, — old Scrooge sat 
busy in his counting-house. It was cold, bleak, 
biting weather, foggy withal, and he could hear 
the people in the court outside go wheezing up 
and down, beating their hands upon their breasts, 
and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones 
to warm them. The city clocks had only just 
gone three, but it was quite dark 2 already. 

The door of Scrooge’s counting-house was open, 
that he might keep his eye upon his clerk, who, 
ill a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank, was 
copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, 
but the clerk’s fire was so very much smaller that 
it looked like one coal. But he couldn’t replenish 
it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room; 
and so surely as the clerk came in with the shovel, 
the master predicted that it would be necessary 

1 Slang for anything especially agreeable. 

2 London is so far north that the winter days are short at best. 
But in London is also much smoke, and a yellow or brown fog, 
which is mentioned here, so that there is not much daylight in 
winter. 


4 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


for them to part. Wherefore the clerk put on his 
white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the 
candle ; in which effort, not being a man of a 
strong imagination, he failed. 

“ A merry Christmas, uncle ! God save you ! ” 
cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of 
Scrooge’s nephew, who came upon him so quickly 
that this was the first intimation he had of his 
approach. 

“ Bah ! ” said Scrooge. “ Humbug ! ” 

“ Christmas a humbug, uncle ! ” said Scrooge’s 
nephew. “You don’t mean that, I am sure ? ” 

“ I do,” said Scrooge. “ Out upon merry Christ¬ 
mas ! * What’s Christmas-time to you but a time 
for paying bills without money ; a time for find¬ 
ing yourself a year older, and not an hour richer ; 
a time for balancing your books, and having every 
item in ’em through a round dozen of months pre¬ 
sented dead against you ? If I could work my 
will,” said Scrooge, indignantly, “ every idiot who 
goes about with 1 Merry Christmas ’ on his lips 
should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried 
with a stake of holly through his heart. He 
should ! ” 

Uncle ! ” pleaded the nephew. 

“Nephew,” returned the uncle, sternly, “keep 
Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it 
in mine.” 

“ Keep it! ” repeated Scrooge’s nephew. “ But 
you don’t keep it.” 


ENGLISH STORIES 


5 


44 Let me leave it alone, then. Much good may 
it do you ! Much good it has ever done you ! ” 

44 There are many things from which I might 
have derived good by which I have not profited, I 
dare say,” returned the nephew, 44 Christmas 
among the rest. But I am sure I have always 
thought of Christmas-time, when it has come 
round, — apart from the veneration due to its 
sacred name and origin, if anything belonging 
to it can be apart from that, — as a good time ; 
a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time ; the 
only time I know of, in the long calendar 
of the year, when men and women seem by 
one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, 
and to think of people below them as if they 
really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and 
not another race of creatures bound on other 
journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has 
never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, 
I believe that it has done me good, and will do me 
good ; and I say, God bless it ! ” 

The clerk in the tank involuntarily applauded. 
44 Let me hear another sound from you” said 
Scrooge, 44 and j^ou’ll keep your Christmas by 
losing your situation. You’re quite a powerful 
speaker, sir,” he added, turning to his nephew. 
44 1 wonder you don’t go into Parliament.” 

44 Don’t be angry, uncle. Come ! Dine with 
us to-morrow.” 

Scrooge said that he would see him-Yes, 



6 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


indeed, he did. He went the whole length of the 
expression, and said that he would see him in that 
extremity first. 

“ But why ? ” cried Scrooge’s nephew. “ Why ? ” 

“ Why did you get married ? ” said Scrooge. 

“Because I fell in love.” 

“ Because you fell in love ! ” growled Scrooge, 
as if that were the only one thing in the world 
more ridiculous than a merry Christmas. “ Good 
afternoon ! ” 

“Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me 
before that happened. Why give it as a reason 
for not coming now ? ” 

“ Good afternoon.” 

“ I want nothing from you ; I ask nothing of 
you ; why cannot we be friends ? ” 

“ Good afternoon ! ” 

“ I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so 
resolute. We have never had any quarrel, to 
which I have been a party. But I have made the 
trial in homage to Christmas, and I’ll keep my 
Christmas humor to the last. So A Merry Christ¬ 
mas, uncle ! ” 

“ Good afternoon.” 

“And A Happy New Year ! ” 

“ Good afternoon ! ” 

His nephew left the room without an angry 
word, notwithstanding. 

The clerk, in letting Scrooge’s nephew out, had 
let two other people in. They were portly gentle- 


ENGLISH STORIES 


7 


men, pleasant to behold, and now stood, with their 
hats off, in Scrooge’s office. They had books and 
papers in their hands, and bowed to him. 

“ Scrooge and Marley’s, I believe,” said one of 
the gentlemen, referring to his list. “Have I 
the pleasure of addressing Mr. Scrooge, or Mr. 
Marley ? ” 

“ Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years,” 
Scrooge replied. “ He died seven years ago, this' 
very night.” 

“ At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,” 
said the gentleman, taking up a pen, “ it is more 
than usually desirable that we should make some 
slight provision for the poor and destitute, who 
suffer greatly at the present time. Many thou¬ 
sands are in want of common necessaries ; hun¬ 
dreds of thousands are in want of common 
comforts, sir.” 

“ Are there no prisons ? ” 

“ Plenty of prisons. But under the impression 
that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of 
mind or body to the multitude,” returned the 
gentleman, “ a few of us are endeavoring to raise 
a fund to buy the poor some meat and drink, 
and means of warmth. We choose this time, 
because it is a time, of all others, when Want is 
keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall 
I put you down for ? ” 

“Nothing ! ” Scrooge replied. 

“ You wish to be anonymous ? ” 


8 


IIA WTHORNE CL A SSICS 


“ I wish to be left alone,” said Scrooge. “ Since 
you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my 
answer. I don’t make merry myself at Christmas, 
and I can’t afford to make idle people merry. I 
help to support the prisons and the workhouses 1 — 
they cost enough — and those who are badly off 
must go there.” 

“ Many can’t go there ; and many would rather 
die.” 

“If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, 
“ they had better do it, and decrease the surplus 
population. Good afternoon, gentlemen.” 

At length the hour of shutting up the counting- 
house arrived. With an ill-will Scrooge dis¬ 
mounted from his stool, and tacitly admitted the 
fact to the expectant clerk in the tank, who 
instantly snuffed his candle out, and put on his 
hat. 

“ You’ll want all day to-morrow, I suppose?” 
said Scrooge. 

“If quite convenient, sir.” 

“ It’s not convenient,” said Scrooge, “ and it’s 
not fair. If I was to stop half-a-crown for it, 
you’d think yourself mightily ill used, I’ll be 
bound ? ” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“ And yet,” said Scrooge, “ j^ou don’t think me 
ill used when I pay a day’s wages for no work.” 

1 A workhouse is a sort of poor-house: cf. p. 71. The work- 
houses and the prisons are supported by taxes. 


ENGLISH STORIES 


9 


“ It’s only once a year, sir.” 

“A poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket 
every twenty-fifth of December ! ” said Scrooge, 
buttoning his great coat to the chin. “ But I sup¬ 
pose you must have the whole day. Be here all 
the earlier next morning.” 

The clerk promised that he would; and Scrooge 
walked out with a growl. The office was closed 
in a twinkling, and the clerk, with the long ends 
of his white comforter dangling below his waist 
(for he boasted no great-coat), went down a slide, 
at the end of a lane of boys, twenty times, in honor 
of its being Christmas Eve, and then ran home, 
as hard as he could pelt, to play at blindman’s 
buff. 

Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual 
melancholy tavern ; and having read all the news¬ 
papers, and beguiled the rest of the evening with 
his banker’s book, went home to bed. He lived in 
chambers which had once belonged to his deceased 
partner. They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in 
a lowering pile of building up a yard. The build¬ 
ing was old enough now, and dreary enough, for 
nobody lived in it but Scrooge, the other rooms 
being all let out as offices. 

Now it is a fact that there was nothing at all 
particular about the knocker on the door, except 
that it was very large. It is also a fact that 
Scrooge had seen it, night and morning, during 
his whole residence in that place ; also that 


10 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


Scrooge liad as little of what is called fancy about 
him as any man in the City of London, and yet 
Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door, 
saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any 
intermediate process of change, — not a knocker, 
but Marley’s face. 

Marley’s face with a dismal light about it, like 
a bad lobster in a dark cellar. It was not angry 
or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge as Marley used 
to look : with ghostly spectacles turned up on its 
ghostly forehead. 

As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon; 
it was a knocker again. He said, “ Pooh, pooh ! ” 
and closed it with a bang. 

The sound resounded through the house like 
thunder. Every room above, and every cask in 
the wine-merchant’s cellars below, appeared to 
have a separate peal of echoes of its own. Scrooge 
was not a man to be frightened by echoes. He 
fastened the door, and walked across the hall, and 
up the stairs, slowly, too, trimming his candle as 
he went. 

Up Scrooge went, not caring a button for that. 
Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it. But 
before he shut his heavy door, he walked through 
his rooms to see that all was right. He had just 
enough recollection of the face to desire to do 
that. 

Sitting room, bedroom, lumber room. All as 
they should be. Nobody under the table, nobody 


ENGLISH STORIES 


11 


under the sofa ; a small fire in the grate ; spoon 
and basin ready ; and the little saucepan of gruel 
(Scrooge had a cold in his head) upon the hob. 
Nobody under the bed; nobody in the closet; 
nobody in his dressing-gown, which was hanging 
up in a suspicious attitude against the wall. 
Lumber room as usual. Old fire-guard, old 
shoes, two fish-baskets, washing-stand on three 
legs, and a poker. 

Quite satisfied, he closed the door, and locked 
himself in ; double-locked himself in, which was 
not his custom. Thus secured against surprise, 
he took off his cravat; put on his dressing- 
gown and slippers and his nightcap ; and sat 
down before the very low fire to take his 
gruel. 

As he threw his head back in the chair, his 
glance happened to rest upon a bell, a disused bell, 
that hung in the room, and communicated, for 
some purpose now forgotten, with a chamber in 
the highest story of the building. It was with 
great astonishment, and with a strange, inexplica¬ 
ble dread, that, as he looked, he saw this bell begin 
to swing. Soon it rang out loudly, and so did 
every bell in the house. 

This was succeeded by a clanking noise, deep 
down below ; as if some person were dragging a 
heavy chain over the casks in the wine-merchant’s 
cellar. 

Then he heard the noise, much louder, on the 


12 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


floors below ; then coming up the stairs ; then 
coming straight towards his door. 

It came on through the heavy door, and a specter 
passed into the room before his eyes. Upon its 
coming in, the dying flame leaped up, as though it 
cried, “ I know him ! Marley’s Ghost! ” and fell 
again. 

The same face, the very same. Marley, in his 
pigtail, usual waistcoat, tights, and boots. His 
body was transparent; so that Scrooge, observing 
him, and looking through his waistcoat, could see 
the two buttons on his coat behind. 

Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had 
no bowels , 1 but he had never believed it until 
now. 

No, nor did he believe it even now. Though he 
looked the phantom through and through, and 
saw it standing before him ; though he felt the 
chilling influence of its death-cold eyes, and 
marked the very texture of the folded kerchief 
bound about its head and chin, he was still in¬ 
credulous, and fought against his senses. 

“ How now ! ” said Scrooge, caustic and cold as 
ever. “ What do you want with me ? ” 

“ Much ! ” — Marley’s voice, no doubt about it. 

“ Who are you ? ” 

“Ask me who I zvas.” 

1 The words were formerly used in the sense of inner parts, and 
so (like heart, or liver) for pity, or compassion. The phrase meant, 
of course, that Marley was a man of no compassion, but here it is 
taken humorously in a literal sense. 


ENGLISH STORIES 


13 


“ Who were you, then ? ” said Scrooge, raising 
his voice. 

“ In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley.” 

“ Can you—can you sit down ? ” asked Scrooge, 
looking doubtfully at him. 

“ I can.” 

“ Do it, then.” 

Scrooge asked the question, because he didn’t 
know whether a ghost so transparent might find 
himself in a condition to take a chair ; and felt 
that in the event of its being impossible, it might 
involve the necessity of an embarrassing expla¬ 
nation. But the Ghost sat down on the opposite 
side of the fireplace, as if he were quite used to it. 

“ You don't believe in me,” observed the Ghost. 

“ I don’t,” said Scrooge. 

“ What evidence would you have of my reality 
beyond that of your senses ? ” 

“ I don’t know,” said Scrooge. 

“ Why do you doubt your senses ? ” 

“ Because,” said Scrooge, “ a little thing af¬ 
fects them. A slight disorder of the stomach 
makes them cheats. You may be an undigested 
bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a 
fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more 
of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you 
are ! ” 

Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking 
jokes, nor did lie feel, in his heart, by any means 
waggish then. The truth is, that he tried to be 


14 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


smart, as a means of distracting his own attention, 
and keeping down his horror. 

But how much greater was his horror when, the 
phantom taking off the bandage round his head? 
as if it were too warm to wear in-doors, his lower 
jaw dropped down upon his breast ! 

“ Mercy ! Dreadful apparition, why do you 
trouble me ? Why do spirits walk the earth, and 
why do they come to me ? ” 

44 It is required of every man, that the spirit 
within him should walk abroad among his fellow- 
men, and travel far and Avide ; 1 and if that spirit 
goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so 
after death. I cannot tell you all 1 Avould. A 
very little more is permitted to me. I cannot 
rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere. 
My spirit never walked beyond our counting-house, 
—mark me ! — in life my spirit never roved beyond 
the narrow limits of our money-changing hole; and 
weary journeys lie before me ! ” 

“ Seven years dead,” mused Scrooge. 44 And 
traveling all the time? You travel fast?” 

44 On the wings of the wind,” replied the Ghost. 

44 You might have got over a great quantity of 
ground in seven years,” said Scrooge. 

44 Oh ! blind-man ! ” cried the phantom, 44 not to 
know that ages of incessant labor, by immortal 
creatures, for this earth, must pass into eternity 

1 i.e. that a man’s interests should not be confined to himself 
alone. 


ENGLISH STORIES 


15 


before the good of which it is susceptible is all 
developed ! Not to know that any Christian spirit 
working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it 
may be, will find its mortal life too short for its 
vast means of usefulness ! Not to know that no 
space of regret can make amends for one life’s 
opportunities misused ! Yet such was I! Oh! 
such was I ! ” 

“ But you were always a good man of business, 
Jacob,” faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply 
this to himself. 

“ Business ! ” cried the Ghost, wringing his 
hands again. “ Mankind was my business. 1 The 
common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, 
forbearance, and benevolence were, all, my busi¬ 
ness. The dealings of my trade were but a drop 
of water in the comprehensive ocean of my busi¬ 
ness ! ” 

Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the 
specter going on at this rate, and began to quake 
exceedingly. 

“ Hear me ! ” cried the Ghost. “ My time is 
nearly gone.” 

“ I will,” said Scrooge. “ But don’t be hard 
upon me ! Don’t be flowery, Jacob ! Pray ! ” 

“ I am here to-night to warn you, that you 
have yet a chance and hope of escaping my 
fate. A chance and hope of my procuring, 
Ebenezer.” 

1 Though he had not appreciated it. 


16 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


“ You were always a good friend to me,” said 
Scrooge. “ Thankee ! ” 

“ You will be haunted,” resumed the Ghost, “ by 
Three Spirits.” 

“Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, 
Jacob? I—I think I’d rather not.” 

“ Without their visits, you cannot hope to shun 
the path I tread. Expect the first to-morrow 
night, when the bell tolls One. Expect the sec¬ 
ond on the next night at the same hour. The 
third, upon the next night when the last stroke 
of Twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me 
no more ; and look that, for your own sake, you 
remember what has passed between us! ” 

It walked backward from him ; and at every 
step he took, the window raised itself a little, so 
that when the apparition reached it, it was wide 
open. 

Scrooge closed the window, and examined the 
door by which the Ghost had entered. It was 
double-locked, as he had locked it with his own 
hands, and the bolts were undisturbed. Scrooge 
tried to say “ Humbug ! ” but stopped at the first 
syllable. And being, from the emotion he had 
undergone, or the fatigues of the day, or his 
glimpse of the Invisible World, or the dull con¬ 
versation of the Ghost, or the lateness of the hour, 
much in need of repose, he went straight to 
bed, without undressing, and fell asleep on the 
instant. 


ENGLISH STORIES 


17 


STAVE TWO 

THE FIRST OF THE THREE SPIRITS 

When Scrooge awoke it was so dark, that, 
looking out of bed, he could scarcely distinguish 
the transparent window from the opaque walls of 
his chamber, until suddenly the church clock tolled 
a deep, dull, hollow, melancholy One. Light flashed 
up in the room upon the instant, and the curtains 1 
of his bed were drawn by a strange figure, — like 
a child ; yet not so like a child as like an old man, 
viewed through some supernatural medium, which 
gave him the appearance of having receded from 
the view, and being diminished to a child’s pro¬ 
portions. Its hair, which hung about its neck 
and down its back, was white, as if with age ; and 
yet the face had not a wrinkle in it, and the ten- 
derest bloom was on the skin. It held a branch 
of fresh, green holly in its hand; and, in singular 
contradiction of that wintry emblem, had its dress 
trimmed with summer flowers. But the- strangest 
thing about it was, that from the crown of its head 
there sprung a bright, clear jet of light, by which 
all this was visible; and which was doubtless the 
occasion of its using, in its duller moments, a 
great extinguisher for a cap, which it now held 
under its arm. 

1 Cf. p. 81, note, 
c 


18 


IIA \ VTHORNE CL A SSICS 


44 Are you the Spirit, sir, whose coming was fore¬ 
told to me? ” asked Scrooge. 

“ I am ! ” 

“ Who, and what are you? ” Scrooge demanded. 

“ I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.” 

44 Long Past ? ” inquired Scrooge, observant of 
its dwarfish stature. 

44 No. Your past. The things that you will 
see with me are shadows of the things that have 
been, they will have no consciousness of us.” 

Scrooge then made bold to inquire what business 
brought him there. 

44 Your welfare ! ” said the Ghost. 44 Rise and 
walk with me ! ” 

It would have been in vain for Scrooge to plead 
that the weather and the hour were not adapted to 
pedestrian purposes ; that the bed was warm, and 
the thermometer a long way below freezing ; that 
he was clad but lightly in his slippers, dressing- 
gown, and nightcap ; and that he had a cold upon 
him at that time. The grasp, though gentle as a 
woman’s hand, was not to be resisted. He rose ; 
but finding that the Spirit made towards the win¬ 
dow, clasped its robe in supplication. 

44 1 am a mortal,” Scrooge remonstrated, 44 and 
liable to fall.” 

44 Bear but a touch of my hand there” said the 
Spirit, laying it upon his heart, 44 and you shall be 
upheld in more than this ! ” 

As the words were spoken, they passed through 


ENGLISH STORIES 


19 


the wall, and stood upon an open country road, 
with fields on either hand. The city had entirely 
vanished. Not a vestige of it was to be seen. 
The darkness and the mist had vanished with 
it, for it was a clear, cold, winter day, with snow 
upon the ground. 

“ Good Heaven ! ” said Scrooge, clasping his 
hands together, as he looked about him. “ I was 
bred in this place. I was a boy here ! ” 

The Spirit gazed upon him mildly. Its gentle 
touch, though it had been light and instantaneous, 
appeared still present to the old man’s sense of 
feeling. He was conscious of a thousand odors 
floating in the air, each one connected with a 
thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, and cares 
long, long forgotten! 

“ Your lip is trembling,” said the Ghost. “And 
what is that upon your cheek?” 

Scrooge muttered, with an unusual catching in 
his voice, that it was a pimple, and begged the 
Ghost to lead him where he would. 

“ You recollect the way ? ” inquired the Spirit. 

“ Remember it! ” cried Scrooge with fervor, “ I 
could walk it blindfold.” 

“ Strange to have forgotten it for so many 
years!” observed the Ghost. “Let us go on.” 

They walked along the road, Scrooge recogniz¬ 
ing every gate, and post, and tree; until a little 
market-town appeared in the distance, with its 
bridge, its church, and winding river. Some 


20 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


shaggy ponies now were seen trotting towards 
them, with boys upon their backs, who called to 
other boys in country gigs and carts, driven by 
farmers. All these boys were in great spirits, and 
shouted to each other, until the broad fields were 
so full of merry music that the crisp air laughed 
to hear it. 

“ These are but shadows of the things that have 
been,” said the Ghost. “ They have no conscious¬ 
ness of us.” 

The jocund travelers came on; and as they 
came, Scrooge knew and named them every one. 
Why was he rejoiced beyond all bounds to see 
them ? Why did his cold eye glisten, and his 
heart leap up as they went past? Why was he 
filled with gladness when he heard them give 
each other Merry Christmas, as they parted at 
cross-roads and by-ways, for their several homes ? 
What was merry Christmas to Scrooge ? Out 
upon merry Christmas! What good had it ever 
done to him? 

“ The school is not quite deserted,” said the 
Ghost. “ A solitary child, neglected by his 
friends, is left there still.” 

Scrooge said he knew it. And he sobbed. 

They left the high-road, by a well-remembered 
lane, and soon approached a mansion of dull 
red brick, with a little weathercock-surmounted 
cupola, on the roof, and a bell hanging in it. It 
was a large house, but one of broken fortunes; 


ENGLISH STORIES 


21 


for the spacious offices were little used, tlieir walls 
were damp and mossy, their windows broken, and 
their gates decayed. Fowls clucked and strutted 
in the stables, and the coach-houses and sheds 
were overrun with grass. Nor was it more reten¬ 
tive of its ancient state, within ; for entering the 
dreary hall, and glancing through the open doors 
of many rooms, they found them poorly furnished, 
cold, and vast. There was an earthy savor in the 
air, a chilly barrenness in the place, which associ¬ 
ated itself somehow with too much getting up by 
candle-light, and not too much to eat. 

They went, the Ghost and Scrooge, across the 
hall, to a door at the back of the house. It opened 
before them, and disclosed a long, bare, melan¬ 
choly room, made barer still by lines of plain deal 
forms and desks. At one of these a lonely boy 
was reading near a feeble fire; and Scrooge sat 
down upon a form, and wept to see his poor for¬ 
gotten self as he had used to be. 

Not a latent echo in the house, not a squeak 
and scuffle from the mice behind the paneling, not 
a drip from the half-thawed water-spout in the 
dull yard behind, not a sigh among the leafless 
boughs of one despondent poplar, not the idle 
swinging of an empty storehouse door, no, not 
a clicking in the fire, but fell upon the heart of 
Scrooge with softening influence, and gave a freer 
passage to his tears. 

The Spirit touched him on the arm, and pointed 


22 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


to his younger self, intent upon his reading. Sud¬ 
denly a man, in foreign garments, wonderfully 
real and distinct to look at, stood outside the win¬ 
dow, with an ax stuck in his belt, and leading by 
the bridle an ass laden with wood. 

“ Why, it’s Ali Baba! ” Scrooge exclaimed in 
ecstasy. “ It’s dear old honest Ali Baba! Yes, 
yes, I know! One Christmas-time, when yonder 
solitary child was left here all alone, he did come, 
for the first time, just like that. Poor boy ! And 
Valentine,” said Scrooge, “and his wild brother 
Orson; there they go ! And what’s his name, 
who was put down in his drawers, asleep, at the 
Gate of Damascus; don’t you see him ? And the 
Sultan’s Groom turned upside down by the Genii; 
there he is upon his head ! Serve him right ! I’m 
glad of it. What business had he to be married 
to the Princess ? ” 

To hear Scrooge expending all the earnestness 
of his nature on such subjects, in a most extraor¬ 
dinary voice between laughing and crying, and to 
see his heightened and excited face, would have 
been a surprise to his business friends in the City, 
indeed. 

“ There’s the Parrot! ” cried Scrooge. “ Green 
body and yellow tail, with a thing like a lettuce 
growing out of the top of his head; there he is ! 
Poor Robin Crusoe, he called him, when he came 
home again, after sailing round the island. ‘Poor 
Robin Crusoe, where have you been, Robin 


ENGLISH STORIES 


23 


Crusoe ? ’ The man thought he was dreaming, 
but he wasn’t. It was the Parrot, you know. 
There goes Friday, running for his life to the lit¬ 
tle creek ! Halloa ! Hoop ! Halloo ! ” 

Then, with a rapidity of transition very foreign 
to his usual character, he said, in pity 7 ' for his for¬ 
mer self, “ Poor boy ! ” and cried again. 

“I wish,” Scrooge muttered, putting his hand' 
in his pocket, and looking about him, after drying 
his eyes with his cuff; “ but it’s too late now.” 

“ What is the matter ? ” asked the Spirit. 

“Nothing,” said Scrooge, “nothing. There 
was a boy singing a Christmas Carol at my door 
last night. I should like to have given him some¬ 
thing: that’s all.” 

The Ghost smiled thoughtfully, and waved its 
hand, saying, at it did so, “ Let us see another 
Christmas! ” 

Scrooge’s former self grew larger at the words, 
and the room became a little darker and more 
dirty. The panels shrunk, the windows cracked ; 
fragments of plaster fell out of the ceiling, and 
the naked laths were shown instead ; but how all 
this was brought about, Scrooge knew no more 
than you do. He only knew that it was quite 
correct; that everything had happened so; that 
there he was, alone again, when all the other boys 
had gone home for the jolly holidays. 

Although they had but that moment left the 
school behind them, they were now in the busy 


24 


IIA WTI10 RNE CL A SSICS 


thoroughfares of a city. It was made plain 
enough, by the dressing of the shops, that here, 
too, it was Christmas-time. 

The Ghost stopped at a certain warehouse door, 
and asked Scrooge if he knew it. 

“Know it!” said Scrooge. “Was I appren¬ 
ticed here ! ” 

They went in. At sight of an old gentleman 
in a Welsh wig, sitting behind such a high desk 
that if he had been two inches taller he must have 
knocked his head against the ceiling, Scrooge cried 
in great excitement : — 

“ Why, it’s old Fezziwig ! Bless his heart; it’s 
Fezziwig alive again ! ” 

Old Fezziwig laid down his pen, and looked up 
at the clock, which pointed to the hour of seven. 
He rubbed his hands ; adjusted his capacious waist¬ 
coat ; laughed all over himself, from his shoes to 
his organ of benevolence ; and called out, in a com¬ 
fortable, oily, riel), fat, jovial voice: — 

“ Yo ho, there ! Ebenezer ! Dick ! ” 

A living and moving picture of Scrooge’s former 
self, a young man, came briskly in, accompanied 
by his fellow-’prentice. 

“ Dick Wilkins, to be sure ! ” said Scrooge to 
the Ghost. “ My old old fellow-’prentice. Bless 
me, yes. There he is. He was very much attached 
to me, was Dick. Poor Dick ! Dear, dear ! ” 

“ Yo ho, my boys ! ” said Fezziwig. “No more 
work to-night. Christmas Eve, Dick. Christ- 


ENGLISH STORIES 


25 


mas, Ebenezer ! Let’s have the shutters up ? before 
a man can say Jack Robinson. Clear away, my 
lads, and let's have lots of room here J Hilliho, 
Dick ! Chirrup, Ebenezer ! ” 

Clear away ! There was nothing they wouldn’t 
have cleared away, or couldn’t have cleared away, 
with old Fezziwig looking on. It was done in a 
minute. Every movable was packed off, as if it 
were dismissed from public life forevermore ; the 
floor was swept and watered, the lamps were 
trimmed, fuel was heaped upon the fire; and 
the warehouse was as snug, and warm, and dry, 
and bright a ballroom as you would desire to see 
upon a winter’s night. 

In came a fiddler with a music book, and went 
up to the lofty desk, and made an orchestra of it, 
and tuned like fifty stomach-aches. In came Mrs. 
Fezziwig, one vast, substantial smile. In came the 
three Miss Fezziwigs, beaming and lovable. In 
came the six young followers whose hearts they 
broke. In came all the young men and women 
employed in the business. In came the house¬ 
maid, with her cousin, the baker. In came the 
cook, with her brother’s particular friend, the 
milkman. In they all came, one after another; 
some shyly, some boldly, some gracefully, some 
awkwardly, some pushing, some pulling; in they 
all came, anyhow and everyhow. Away they all 
went, twenty couple at once ; hands half round 
and back again the other way ; down the middle 


26 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


and up again ; round and round in various stages 
of affectionate grouping ; old top couple always 
turning up in the wrong place ; new top couple 
starting off again, as soon as they got there ; all 
top couples at last, and not a bottom one to help 
them ! When this result was brought about, old 
Fezziwig, clapping his hands to stop the dance, 
cried out, “ Well done ! ” and the fiddler plunged 
his hot face into a pot of porter,- especially pro¬ 
vided for that purpose. 

There were more dances, and there were for¬ 
feits, and more dances, and there was cake, and 
there was negus, and there was a great piece of 
cold roast, and there was a great piece of cold 
boiled, and there were mince pies, and plenty of 
beer. But the great effect of the evening came 
after the roast and boiled, when the fiddler struck 
up “ Sir Roger de Coverley.” 1 Then old Fezziwig 
stood out to dance with Mrs. Fezziwig. Top 
couple, too ; with a good stiff piece of work cut 
out for them; three or four and twenty pair of 
partners; people who were not to be trifled with ; 
people who would dance, and had no notion of 
walking. But if they had been twice as many — 
ah, four times — old Fezziwig would have been a 
match for them, and so would Mrs. Fezziwig. As 
to her , she was worthy to be his partner in every 
sense of the term. A positive light appeared to 

1 The typical English country dance, of the same general kind 
as the Virginia reel. 


ENGLISH STORIES 


27 

issue from Fezziwig’s calves. They shone in 
every part of the dance like moons. You couldn’t 
have predicted, at any given time, what would be¬ 
come of them next. And when old Fezziwisr and 
Mrs. Fezziwig had gone all through the dance ; 
advance and retire, turn your partner, bow and 
courtesy, corkscrew, thread-the-needle, and back 
again to your place ; Fezziwig 44 cut ” 1 — so deftly, 
that he appeared to wink with his legs, and came 
upon his feet again without a stagger. 

When the clock struck eleven, this domestic ball 
broke up. Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig took their 
stations, one on either side the door, and shak¬ 
ing hands with every person individually as he 
or she went out, wished him or her a Merry 
Christmas. When everybody had retired but the 
two ’prentices, they did the same to them ; and 
thus the cheerful voices died away, and the lads 
were left to their beds, which were under a counter 
in the back shop. 

“ A small matter,” said the Ghost, 44 to make 
these silly folks so full of gratitude. He has 
spent but a few pounds of your mortal money : 
three or four, perhaps. Is that so much that he 
deserves this praise ? ” 

44 It isn’t that,” said Scrooge, heated by the re¬ 
mark, and speaking unconsciously like his former, 
not his latter self, — 44 it isn’t that, Spirit. He 

1 Cut pigeon-wings; i.e. leaped in the air and clapped his heels 
together. 


28 


IIA WTHOENE CLASSICS 


has the power to render us happy or unhappy ; to 
make our service light or burdensome ; a pleasure 
or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and 
looks ; in things so slight and insignificant that it 
is impossible to add and count ’em up ; what then ? 
The happiness he gives is quite as great as if 
it cost a fortune.” 

He felt the Spirit’s glance, and stopped. 

“ What is the matter ? ” asked the Ghost. 

“Nothing particular,” said Scrooge. 

“Something, I think?” the Ghost insisted. 

“No,” said Scrooge, — “no. I should like to 
be able to say a word or two to my clerk just now. 
That’s all.” 

“ My time grows short,” observed the Spirit. 
“ Quick ! ” 

This was not addressed to Scrooge, or to any one 
whom he could see, but it produced an immediate 
effect. For again Scrooge saw himself. He was 
older now ; a man in the prime of life. 

He was not alone, but sat by the side of a fair 
young girl in a black dress, in whose eyes there 
were tears. 

“It matters little,” she said softly. “To you, 
very little. Another idol has displaced me ; and 
if it can cheer and comfort you in time to come, as 
1 would-have tried to do, I have no just cause to 
grieve.” 

“ What idol has displaced you ? ” 

“ A golden one. You fear the world too much,” 


English Stories 


29 


she answered gently. “All your other hopes have 
merged into the hope of being beyond the chance 
of its sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler 
aspirations fall off one by one, until the master 
passion, Gain, engrosses you. Have I not ? ” 
“What then?” he retorted. “Even if I have 
grown so much wiser, what then? I am not 
changed towards you. Have I ever sought release 
from our engagement ? ” 

“ In words, no. Never.” 

“ In what, then ? ” 

“In a changed nature ; in an altered spirit; in 
another atmosphere of life another Hope as its 
great end. If you were free to-day, to-morrow, 
yesterday, can even I believe that you would 
choose a dowerless girl, — or, choosing her, if for 
a moment you were false enough to your one guid¬ 
ing principle to do so, do I not know that your 
repentance and regret would surely follow ? I do ; 
and I release you. With a full heart, for the love 
of him you once were.” 

“ Spirit ! remove me from this place.” 

“ I told you these were shadows of the things 
that have been,” said the Ghost. “ That they are 
what they are, do not blame me ! ” 

“ Remove me ! ” Scrooge exclaimed. “ I cannot 
bear it! Leave me! Take me back ! Haunt me 
no longer ! ” 

As he struggled with the Spirit, he was con¬ 
scious of being exhausted, and overcome by an 


30 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


irresistible drowsiness ; and, further, of being in 
his own bedroom. He had barely time to reel to 
bed before he sank into a heavy sleep. 


STAVE THREE 

THE SECOND OF THE THREE SPIRITS 

Scrooge awoke in his own bedroom. There was 
no doubt about that. But it and his own adjoin¬ 
ing sitting room, into which he shuffled in his slip¬ 
pers, attracted by a great light there, had undergone 
a surprising transformation. The walls and ceiling 
were so hung with living green that it looked a 
perfect grove. The leaves of holly, mistletoe, and 
ivy reflected back the light, as if so many little 
mirrors had been scattered there ; and such a 
mighty blaze went roaring up the chimney, as that 
petrifaction of a hearth had never known in 
Scrooge’s time, or Marley’s, or for many and many a 
winter season gone. Heaped upon the floor, to form 
a kind of throne, Wore turkeys, geese, game, brawn, 
great joints of meat, sucking pigs, long wreaths of 
sausages, mince pies, plum puddings, barrels of 
oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, 
juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth- 
cakes, and great bowls of punch. In easy state 
upon this couch, there sat a Giant, 1 glorious to 

1 This is a description of Santa Claus, the Dutch name of 
Saint Nicholas, the patron saint of children. The custom, in 


ENGLISH STORIES 


31 


see ; who bore a glowing torch in shape not unlike 
Plenty’s horn, and who raised it high to shed its 
light on Scrooge, as he came peeping round the 
door. 

“ Come in ! ” exclaimed the Ghost, — “ come in ! 
and know me better, man ! I am the Ghost of 
Christmas Present. Look upon me ! You have 
never seen the like of me before ? ” 

44 Never,” Scrooge made answer to it. 

44 Have never walked forth with the younger 
members of my family ; meaning (for I am very 
young) my elder brothers born in these later years ? ” 
pursued the Phantom. 

44 1 don’t think 1 have,” said Scrooge. 44 1 am 
afraid I have not. Have you had many brothers, 
Spirit ? ” 

44 More than eighteen hundred,” said the Ghost. 

44 A tremendous family to provide for,” muttered 
Scrooge. 44 Spirit,” said Scrooge, submissively, 
44 conduct me where you will. I went forth last 
night on compulsion, and I learnt a lesson which 
is working now. To-night, if you have aught to 
teach me, let me profit by it.” 

44 Touch my robe ! ” 

Scrooge did as he was told, and held it fast. 

Holly, mistletoe, red berries, ivy, turkeys, geese, 

some European countries and in America, of children hanging up 
their stockings for Santa Claus to fill with presents is derived from 
a story that this saint threw into an open window, on three differ¬ 
ent nights, a purse of gold as a marriage portion for each of the 
three daughters of a poor nobleman. 


32 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


game, poultry, brawn, meat, pigs, sausages, oys¬ 
ters, pies, puddings, fruit, and punch, all vanished 
instantly. So did the room, the fire, the ruddy 
glow, the hour of night; and they stood in the 
city streets on Christmas morning, where (for 
the weather was severe) the people made a rough, 
but brisk and not unpleasant kind of music, in 
scraping the snow from the pavement in front of 
their dwellings, and from the tops of their houses, 
whence it was mad delight to the boys to see it 
come plumping down into the road below, and 
splitting into artificial little snow-storms. 

The house fronts looked black enough, and the 
windows blacker, contrasting with the smooth 
white sheet of snow upon the roofs, and with the- 
dirtier snow upon the ground ; which last deposit 
had been plowed up in deep furrows by the 
heavy wheels of carts and wagons ; furrows that 
crossed and recrossed each other hundreds of 
times where the great streets branched off ; and 
made intricate channels, hard to trace, in the thick 
yellow mud and icy water. The sky was gloomy, 
and the shortest streets were choked up with a 
dingy mist, half thawed, half frozen, whose heavier 
particles descended in a shower of sooty atoms, as 
if all the chimneys in Great Britain had, by one 
consent, caught fire, and were blazing away to 
their dear hearts’ content. There was nothing 
very cheerful in the climate or the town, and yet 
was there an air of cheerfulness abroad that the 


ENGLISH ST (HUES 


83 


clearest summer air and brightest summer sun 
might have endeavored to diffuse in vain. 

For the people who were shoveling away on the 
house-tops were jovial and full of glee, calling out 
to one another from the parapets, and now and 
then exchanging a facetious snowball,—better- 
natured missile far than many a wordy jest, — 
laughing heartily if it went right, and not less 
heartily if it went wrong. The poulterers’ shops 
were still half open, and the fruiterers’ were radi¬ 
ant in their glory. There were great, round, pot¬ 
bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waist¬ 
coats of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors, 
and tumbling out into the street in their apoplectic 
opulence. There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad- 
girthed Spanish onions, shining in the fatness of 
their growth like Spanish friars, and winking from 
their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they 
went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up 
mistletoe. There were pears and apples, clustered 
high in blooming pyramids ; there were bunches 
of grapes, made, in the shopkeepers’ benevolence, 
to dangle from conspicuous hooks, that people’s 
mouths might water gratis as they passed; there 
were piles of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, 
in their fragrance, ancient walks among the woods, 
and pleasant shufflings ankle deep through with¬ 
ered leaves ; there were Norfolk biffins, squab and 
swarthy, setting off the yellow of the oranges and 
lemons, and, in the great compactness of their juicy 


34 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


persons, urgently entreating and beseeching to be 
carried home in paper bags and eaten after din¬ 
ner. The very gold and silver fish, set forth 
among these choice fruits in a bowl, though mem¬ 
bers of a dull and stagnant-blooded race, appeared 
to know that there was something going on; and, 
to a fish, went gasping round and round their lit¬ 
tle world in slow and passionless excitement. 

The grocers’ ! oh, the grocers’ ! nearly closed, 
with perhaps two shutters down, or one; but 
through those gaps such glimpses ! It was not 
alone that the scales descending on the counter 
made a merry sound, or that the twine and roller 
parted company so briskly, or that the canisters 
were rattled up and down like juggling tricks, or 
even that the blended scents of tea and coffee 
were so grateful to the nose, or even that the rai¬ 
sins were so plentiful and rare, the almonds so 
extremely white, the sticks of cinnamon so long 
and straight, the other spices so delicious, the can¬ 
died fruits so caked and spotted with molten sugar 
as to make the coldest lookers-on feel faint, and 
subsequently bilious. Nor was it that the figs 
were moist and pulpy, or that the French plums 
blushed in modest tartness from their highly deco¬ 
rated boxes, or that everything was good to eat 
and in its Christmas dress; but the customers 
were all so hurried and so eager in the hopeful 
promise of the day, that they tumbled up against 
each other at the door, crashing their wicker has- 


ENGLISH STORIES 


35 


kets wildly, and left their purchases upon the 
counter, and came running back to fetch them, 
and committed hundreds of the like mistakes, in 
the best humor possible; while the grocer and his 
people were so frank and fresh that the polished 
hearts with which they fastened their aprons be¬ 
hind might have been their own, worn outside for 
general inspection, and for Christmas daws to 
peck at, if they chose. 

But soon the steeples called good people all to 
church and chapel, and away they came, flocking 
through the streets in their best clothes, and with 
their gayest faces. And at the same time there 
emerged from scores of by-streets, lanes, and 
nameless turnings innumerable people, carrying 
their dinners to the bakers’ shops. The sight of 
these poor revelers appeared to interest the Spirit 
very much, for he stood, with Scrooge beside him, 
in a baker’s doorway, and, taking off the covers as 
their bearers passed, sprinkled incense on their 
dinners from his torch. And it was a very un¬ 
common kind of torch, for once or twice when 
there were angry words between some dinner- 
carriers who had jostled each other, he shed a few 
drops of water on them from it, and their good- 
humor was restored directly. For they said, it 
was a shame to quarrel upon Christmas Day. 
And so it was ! God love it, so it was ! 

Scrooge and the Ghost passed on, invisible, 
straight to Scrooge’s clerk’s ; and on the threshold 


86 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


of the door the Spirit smiled, and stopped to bless 
Bob Cratchit’s dwelling with the sprinklings of 
his torch. Think of that ! Bob had but fifteen 
“ Bob ” 1 a week himself ; he pocketed on Satur¬ 
days but fifteen copies of his Christian name ; 
and yet the Ghost of Christmas Present blessed 
his four-roomed house ! 

Then up rose Mrs. Cratchit, Cratchit’s wife, 
dressed out but poorly in a twice-turned gown, 
but brave in ribbons, which are cheap and make a 
goodly show for sixpence ; and she laid the cloth, 
assisted by Belinda Cratchit, second of her daugh¬ 
ters, also brave in ribbons ; while Master Peter 
Cratchit plunged a fork into the saucepan of pota¬ 
toes, and getting the corners of his monstrous 
shirt-collar (Bob’s private property, conferred 
upon his son and heir in honor of the day) into 
his mouth, rejoiced to find himself so gallantly 
attired, and yearned to show his linen in the fash¬ 
ionable Parks. And now two smaller Cratchits, 
boy and girl, came tearing in, screaming that out¬ 
side the baker’s they had smelt the goose, and 
known it for their own ; and, basking in luxurious 
thoughts of sage and onion, these young Cratchits 
danced about the table, and exalted Master Peter 
Cratchit to the skies, while he (not proud, although 
his collars nearly choked him) blew the fire, until 
the slow potatoes, bubbling up, knocked loudly at 
the saucepan-lid to be let out and peeled. 

1 A shilling. 


ENGLISH STOGIES 


37 


“ What has ever got your precious father, then ?” 
said Mrs. Cratchit. “And your brother, Tiny 
Tim ? And Martha warn’t as late last Christmas 
Day by half an hour ! ” 

“ Here’s Martha, mother,” said a girl, appearing 
as she spoke. 

44 Here’s Martha, mother ! ” cried the two young 
Cratchits. 44 Hurrah ! There’s such a goose, 
Martha ! ” 

44 Why, bless your heart alive, my dear, how 
late you are ! ” said Mrs. Cratchit, kissing her a 
dozen times, and taking off her shawl and bonnet 
for her with officious zeal. 

44 We’d a deal of work to finish up last night,” 
replied the girl, 44 and had to clear away this 
morning, mother ! ” 

44 Well ! Never mind so long as you are come,” 
said Mrs. Cratchit. 44 Sit ye down before the fire, 
my dear, and have a warm, Lord bless ye ! ” 

44 No, no ! There’s father coming,” cried the 
two young Cratchits, who were everywhere at 
once. 44 Hide, Martha, hide ! ” 

So Martha hid herself, and in came little Bob, 
the father, with at least three feet of comforter, 
exclusive of the fringe, hanging down before him ; 
and his threadbare clothes darned up and brushed, 
to look seasonable ; and Tiny Tim upon his 
shoulder. Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore a little 
crutch, and had his limbs supported by an iron 
frame ! 


38 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


“ Why, where’s our Martha ! ” cried Bob 
Cratchit, looking round. 

“Not coming,” said Mrs. Cratchit. 

“ Not coming !.” said Bob, with a sudden declen¬ 
sion in his high spirits ; for he had been Tim’s 
blood horse all the way from church, and had 
come home rampant, — 44 not coming upon Christ¬ 
mas Day ! ” 

Martha didn’t like to see him disappointed, if it 
were only in joke ; so she came out prematurely 
from behind the closet door, and ran into his arms, 
while the two young Cratchits hustled Tiny Tim, 
and bore him off into the washhouse, that he 
might hear the pudding singing in the copper. 

44 And how did little Tim behave ? ” asked Mrs. 
Cratchit, when she had rallied Bob on his credulity 
and Bob had hugged his daughter to his heart’s 
content. 

44 As good as gold,” said Bob, 44 and better. 
Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so 
much, and thinks the strangest things you ever 
heard. lie told me, coming home, that he hoped 
the people saw him in the church, because he was 
a cripple, and it might be-pleasant to them to 
remember, upon Christmas Day, who made lame 
beggars walk and blind-men see.” 

Bob’s voice was tremulous when he told them 
this, and trembled more when he said that Tiny 
Tim was growing strong and hearty. 

His active little crutch was heard upon the floor, 


ENGLISH STORIES 


89 


and back came Tiny Tim before another word was 
spoken, escorted by his brother and sister to his 
stool beside the fire ; and while Bob, turning up 
his cuffs, —as if, poor fellow, they were capable 
of being made more shabby, — compounded some 
hot mixture in a jug with gin and lemons, and 
stirred it round and round, and put it on the hob 
to simmer, Master Peter and the two ubiquitous 
young Cratchits went to fetch the goose, with 
which they soon returned in high procession. 

Mrs. Cratchit made the gravy (ready before¬ 
hand in a little saucepan) hissing hot ; Master 
Peter mashed the potatoes with incredible vigor ; 
Miss Belinda sweetened up the apple sauce; Martha 
dusted the hot plates ; Bob took Tiny Tim beside 
him in a tiny corner at the table ; the two young 
Cratchits set chairs for everybody, not forgetting 
themselves, and, mounting guard upon their posts, 
crammed spoons into their mouths, lest they should 
shriek for goose before their turn came to be 
helped. At last the dishes were set on, and grace 
was said. It was succeeded by a breathless pause, 
as Mrs. Cratchit, looking slowly all along the 
carving-knife, prepared to plunge it in the breast ; 
but when she did, and when the long-expected 
gush of stuffing issued forth, one murmur of 
delight arose all round the board, and even Tiny 
Tim, excited by the two young Cratchits, beat on 
the table with the handle of his knife, and feebly 
cried Hurrah ! 





40 


11A I VT110LINE CLASSICS 


There never was such a goose. Bob said he 
didn’t believe there ever was such a goose cooked. 
Its tenderness and flavor, size and cheapness, were 
the themes of universal admiration. Eked out by 
apple sauce and mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient 
dinner for the whole family; indeed, as Mrs. 
Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one 
small atom of a bone upon the dish), they hadn’t 
ate it all at last ! Yet every one had had enough, 
and the youngest Cratchits in particular were 
steeped in sage and onion to the eyebrows ! 
But now, the plates being changed by Miss 
Belinda, Mrs. Cratchit left the room alone — too 
nervous to bear witnesses — to take the pudding 
up, and bring it in. 

Suppose it should not be done enough ! Suppose 
it should break in turning out ! Suppose some¬ 
body should have got over the wall of the back 
yard, and stolen it, while they were merry with 
the goose, — a supposition at which the two young 
Cratchits became livid ! All sorts of horrors 
were supposed. 

Hallo ! A great deal of steam ! The pudding 
was out of the copper. A smell like a washing- 
day ! That was the cloth. A smell like ail eat¬ 
ing-house and a pastry-cook’s next door to each 
other, with a laundress’s next door to that ! That 
was the pudding ! In half a minute Mrs. 

Cratchit entered — flushed, but smiling proudly_ 

with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so 


ENGLISH STORIES 


41 


hard and firm, blazing in half of half-a-quartern of 
ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly 
stuck into the top. 

Oh, a wonderful pudding ! Bob Cratchit said, 
and calmly, too, that he regarded it as the greatest 
success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since their 
marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that, now the 
weight was off her mind, she would confess she 
had her doubts about the quantity of flour. 
Everybody had something to say about it, but 
nobody said or thought it was at all a small pud¬ 
ding for a large family. It would have been flat 
heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed 
to hint at such a thing. 

At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was 
cleared, the hearth swept, and the fire made up. 
The compound in the jug being tasted, and con¬ 
sidered perfect, apples and oranges were put upon 
the table, and a shovelful of chestnuts on the fire. 
Then all the Cratchit family drew round the hearth 
in what Bob Cratchit called a circle, and at Bob 
Cratchit’s elbow stood the family display of glass,— 
two tumblers, and a custard-cup without a handle. 

These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, 
as well as golden goblets would have done ; and 
Bob served it out with beaming looks, while the 
chestnuts on the fire sputtered and cracked noisily. 
Then Bob proposed : — 

“ A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears, God 
bless us ! ” 


42 


IIAWTHOBNE CLASSICS 


Which all the family reechoed. 

“ God bless us every one ! ” said Tiny Tim, the 
last of all. 

He sat very close to his father’s side, upon his 
little stool. Bob'held his withered little hand in 
his, as if he loved the child, and wished to keep 
him by his side, and dreaded that he might be 
taken from him. 

Scrooge raised his head speedily, on hearing his 
own name. 

“ Mr. Scrooge ! ” said Bob ; “ I’ll give you Mr. 
Scrooge, the Founder of the Feast ! ” 

“The Founder of the Feast, indeed!” cried 
Mrs. Cratchit, reddening. “ I wish I had him 
here. I’d give him a piece of my mind to feast 
upon, and I hope he’d have a good appetite for it.” 

“ My dear,” said Bob, “ the children ! Christ¬ 
mas Day.” 

“ It should be Christmas Day, I am sure,” said 
she, “on which one drinks the health of such an 
odious, stingy, hard, unfeeling man as Mr. Scrooge. 
You know he is, Robert ! Nobody knows it better 
than you do, poor fellow ! ” 

“ My dear,” was Bob’s mild answer, “ Christmas 
Day.” 

“ I’ll drink his health for your sake, and the 
Day’s,” said Mrs. Cratchit, “not for his. Long 
life to him ! A merry Christmas and a happy new 
year! He’ll be very merry and very happy, I 
have no doubt!” 


ENGLISH STORIES 


43 


The children drank the toast after her. It was 
the first of their proceedings which had no hearti¬ 
ness in it. Tiny Tim drank it last of all, but he 
didn’t care twopence for it. Scrooge was the 
Ogre of the family. The mention of his name 
cast a dark shadow on the party, which was not 
dispelled for full five minutes. 

After it had passed away, they were ten times 
merrier than before, from the mere relief of 
Scrooge the Baleful being done with. Bob 
Cratchit told them how he had a situation in his 
eye for Master Peter, which would bring in, if 
obtained, full five-and-sixpence weekly. The two 
young Cratchits laughed tremendously at the idea 
of Peter’s being a man of business ; and Peter 
* himself looked thoughtfully at the fire from 
between his collars, as if he were deliberating 
what particular investments he should favor when 
he came into the receipt of that bewildering 
income. Martha, who was a poor apprentice at a 
milliner’s, then told them what kind of work she 
had to do, and how many hours she worked at a 
stretch, and how she meant to lie abed to-morrow 
morning for a good, long rest ; to-morrow being a 
holiday she passed at home. Also how she had 
seen a countess and a lord some days before, and 
how the lord “ was much about as tall as Peter ; ” 
at which Peter pulled up his collars so high that 
you couldn’t have seen his head if you had been 
there. All this time the chestnuts and the jug 


44 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


went round and round ; and by and by they had a 
song, about a lost child traveling in the snow, from 
Tiny Tim, who had a plaintive little voice, and 
sang it very well indeed. 

There was nothing of high mark in this. They 
were not a handsome family ; they were not well 
dressed ; their shoes were far from being water¬ 
proof ; their clothes were scanty; and Peter 
might have known, and very likely did, the inside 
of a pawnbroker’s. But they were happy, grate¬ 
ful, pleased with one another, and contented with 
the time ; and when they faded, and looked 
happier yet in the bright sprinklings of the 
Spirit’s torch at parting, Scrooge had his eye 
upon them, and especially on Tiny Tim, until 
the last. 

It was a great surprise to Scrooge, as this scene 
vanished, to hear a hearty laugh. It was a much 
greater surprise to Scrooge to recognize it as his 
own nephew’s, and to find himself in a bright, dry, 
gleaming room, with the Spirit standing smiling 
by his side, and looking at that same nephew ! 

It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of 
things, that, while there is infection in disease and 
sorrow, there is nothing in the ^orld so irresistibly 
contagious as laughter and good-humor. When 
Scrooge’s nephew laughed, Scrooge’s niece by 
marriage, laughed as heartily as he. And their 
assembled friends, being not a bit behindhand, 
laughed out lustily. 


ENGLISH STORIES 


45 


44 He said that Christmas was a humbug, as I 
live ! ” cried Scrooge’s nephew. 44 He believed it, 
too ! ” 

44 More shame for him, Fred ! ” said Scrooge’s 
niece, indignantly. Bless those women ! they 
never do anything by halves. They are always 
in earnest. 

She was very pretty ; exceedingly pretty. 
With a dimpled, surprised-looking, capital face ; 
a ripe little mouth, that seemed made to be kissed, 
— as no doubt it was ; all kinds of good little dots 
about her chin, ‘that melted into one another when 
she laughed ; and the sunniest pair of eyes you 
ever saw in any little creature’s head. Altogether 
she was what you would have called provoking, 
but satisfactory, too. Oh, perfectly satisfac¬ 
tory ! 

44 He’s a comical old fellow, ” said Scrooge’s 
nephew, 44 that’s the truth ; and not so pleasant as 
he might be. However, his offenses carry their 
own punishment, and I have nothing to say against 
him. Who suffers by his ill whims ? Himself, 
always. Here, he takes it into his head to dislike 
us, and he won’t come and dine with us. What’s 
the consequence ? He don’t lose much of a 
dinner.” 

44 Indeed, I think he loses a very good dinner,” 
interrupted Scrooge’s niece. Everybody else said 
the same, and they must be allowed to have been 
competent judges, because they had just had din- 


4(3 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


ner ; and, with the dessert upon the table, were 
clustered round the fire, by lamplight. 

“Well! I am very glad to hear it,” said 
Scrooge’s nephew, “ because I haven’t any great 
faith in these young housekeepers. What do you 
say, Topper ? ” 

Topper had clearly got his eye upon one of 
Scrooge’s niece’s sisters, for he answered that a 
bachelor was a wretched outcast, who had no right 
to express an opinion on the subject. Whereat 
Scrooge’s niece’s sister — the plump one with 
the lace tucker, not the one with the roses — 
blushed. 

“ Do go on, Fred,” said Scrooge’s niece, clapping 
her hands. “ He never finishes what he begins to 
say ! He is such a ridiculous fellow ! ” 

Scrooge’s nephew reveled in another laugh, and 
as it was impossible to keep the infection off, 
though the plump sister tried hard to do it with 
aromatic vinegar, his example was unanimously 
followed. 

“ I was only going to say,” said Scrooge’s 
nephew, “that the consequence of his taking a 
dislike to us, and not making merry with us, is, 
as I think, that he loses some pleasant moments, 
which could do him no harm. I am sure he loses 
pleasanter companions than he can find in his own 
thoughts, either in his moldy old office or his 
dusty chambers. I mean to give him the same 
chance every year, whether he likes it or not, for 


ENGLISH STOUIES 


47 


I pity him. lie may rail at Christmas till he 
dies, but he can’t help thinking better of it — I 
defy him — if he finds me going there, in good tem¬ 
per, year after year, and saying, ‘Uncle Scrooge, 
how are you? ’ If it only puts him in the vein to 
leave his poor clerk fifty pounds, that's something ; 
and I think I shook him, yesterday.” 

It was their turn to laugh now, at the notion of 
his shaking Scrooge. But being thoroughly good- 
natured, and not much caring what they laughed 
at, so that they laughed at any rate, he encouraged 
them in their merriment, and passed the bottle, 
joyously. 

After tea they had some music. For they were 
a musical family, and knew what they were about, 
when they sung a glee or catch, I can assure you; 
especially Topper, who could growl away in the 
bass like a good one, and never swell the large 
veins in his forehead, or get red in the face over 
it. 

But they didn’t devote the whole evening to 
music. After a while they played at forfeits ; for 
it is good to be children sometimes, and never 
better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder 
was a child himself. There was first a game at 
blind-man’s buff. And I no more believe Topper 
was really blind than I believe he had eyes in his 
boots. Because the way he went after that plump 
sister in the lace tucker was an outrage on the 
credulity of human nature. Knocking down the 


48 


HA WT HORNE CL A SSICS 


fire-irons, tumbling over the chairs, bumping up 
against the piano, smothering himself amongst 
the curtains, wherever she went, there went he ! 
He always knew where the plump sister was. He 
wouldn’t catch anybody else. If you had fallen 
up against him (as some of them did) and stood 
there, he would have made a feint of endeavoring 
to seize you, which would have been an affront to 
your understanding, and would instantly have 
sidled off in the direction of the plump sister. 

“ Here is a new game,” said Scrooge. “ One 
half hour, Spirit, only one ! ” 

It was a game called Yes and No , 1 where 
Scrooge’s nephew had to think of something, and 
the rest must find out what ; he only answering to 
their questions yes or no, as the case was. The 
fire of questioning to which he was exposed, elicited 
from him that he was thinking of an animal, a live 
animal, rather a disagreeable animal, a savage ani¬ 
mal, an animal that growled and grunted some¬ 
times, and talked sometimes, and lived in London, 
and walked about the streets, and wasn’t made a 
show of, and wasn’t led by anybody, and didn’t live 
in a menagerie, and was never killed in a market, 
and was not a horse, or an ass, or a cow, or a bull, 
or a tiger, or a dog, or a pig, or a cat, or a bear. 
At every new question put to him, this nephew 
burst into a fresh roar of laughter ; and was so 
inexpressibly tickled, that he was obliged to get 

1 Often called “ Twenty Questions.” 


ENGLISH STORIES 


49 


up off the sofa and stamp. At last the plump 
sister cried out: — 

“I have found it out ! I know what it is, Fred! 
I know what it is ! ” 

“ What is it ? ” cried Fred. 

“ It’s your Uncle Scro-o-o-o-oge ! ” 

Which it certainly was. Admiration was the 
universal sentiment, though some objected that 
the reply to “Is it a bear? ” ought to have been 
“ Yes.” 

Uncle Scrooge had imperceptibly become so gay 
and light of heart, that he would have drank to 
the unconscious company in an inaudible speech, 
if the Ghost had given him time. But the whole 
scene passed off in the breath of the last word 
spoken by his nephew ; and he and the Spirit 
were again upon their travels. 

Much they saw, and far they went, and many 
homes they visited, but always with a happy end. 
The Spirit stood beside sick-beds, and they were 
cheerful ; on foreign lands, and they were close 
at home ; by struggling men, and they were 
patient in their greater hope ; by poverty, and 
it was rich. In almshouse, hospital, and jail, in 
misery’s every refuge, where vain man in his little 
brief authority had not made fast the door, and 
barred the Spirit out, he left his blessing, and 
taught Scrooge his precepts. 

Suddenly, as they stood together in an open 
place, the bell struck twelve. 


50 


11A WT110R NE CL A SSICS 


Scrooge looked about him for the Ghost, and 
saw it no more. As the last stroke ceased to 
vibrate, he remembered the prediction of old 
Jacob Marley, and, lifting up his eyes, beheld a 
solemn Phantom, draped and hooded, coming, 
like a mist along the ground, towards him. 


STAVE POUR 

THE LAST OF THE SPIRITS 

The Phantom slowly, gravely, silently, ap¬ 
proached. When it came near him, Scrooge 
bent down upon his knee ; for in the air through 
which this Spirit moved it seemed to scatter 
gloom and mystery. 

It was shrouded in a deep black garment, which 
concealed its head, its face, its form, and left noth¬ 
ing of it visible save one outstretched hand. 

He knew no more, for the Spirit neither spoke 
nor moved. 

“ I am in the presence of the Ghost of Christ¬ 
mas Yet To Come?” said Scrooge. 

“Ghost of the Future ! I fear you more than 
any specter I have seen. But as I know your 
purpose is to do me good, and as I hope to live 
to be another man from what I was, I am pre¬ 
pared to bear you company, and do it with a 
thankful heart. Will you not speak to me?” 


ENGLISH STORIES 


51 


It gave him no reply. The hand was pointed 
straight before them. 

“ Lead on ! Lead on ! The night is waning 
fast, and it is precious time to me, 1 know. 
Lead on, Spirit ! ” 

They scarcely seemed to enter the City 1 ; for 
the City rather seemed to spring up about them. 
But there they were, in the heart of it; on 
’Change, amongst the merchants. 

The Spirit stopped beside one little knot of 
business men. Observing that the hand was 
pointed to them, Scrooge advanced to listen to 
their talk. 

“No,” said a great fat man with a monstrous 
chin. “ I don’t know much about it either way. 
I only know he’s dead.” 

“ When did he die ? ” inquired another. 

“Last night, I believe.” 

“ Why, what was the matter with him ? I 
thought he’d never die.” 

“ God knows,” said the first, with a yawn. 

“ What has he done with his money ? ” asked 
a red-faced gentleman. 

“I haven’t heard,” said the man with the 
large chin, yawning again. “ Left it to his com¬ 
pany, perhaps. He hasn’t left it to me. That’s 
all I know.” 

This pleasantry was received with a general 
laugh. 

1 The City is tlie old part of London. 


52 


HA I V THORNE CL A SSICS 


“It’s likely to be a very cheap funeral,” said 
the same speaker; “for, upon my life, I don’t 
know of anybody to go to it. Suppose we make 
up a party, and volunteer ? ” 

“ I don’t mind going if a lunch is provided,” 
observed the gentleman with the excrescence on 
his nose. “ But I must be fed, if I make one.” 

Another laugh. 

“Well, I am the most disinterested among you, 
after all,” said the first speaker, “ for I never wear 
black gloves, and I never eat lunch. But I’ll offer 
to go, if anybody else will. When 1 come to think 
of it, I’m not at all sure that I wasn’t his most 
particular friend ; for we used to stop and speak 
whenever we met. By-by ! ” 

Speakers and listeners strolled away, and mixed 
with other groups. Scrooge knew the men, and 
looked towards the Spirit for an explanation. 

The Phantom glided on into a street. Its finger 
pointed to two persons meeting. Scrooge listened 
again, thinking that the explanation might lie here. 

He knew these men, also, perfectly. They were 
men of business: very wealthy, and of great im¬ 
portance. He had made a point always of stand¬ 
ing well in their esteem: in a business point of 
view, that is; strictly in a business point of view. 

“ How are you ? ” said one. 

“ How are you ? ” returned the other. 

“ Well! ” said the first. “ Old Scratch has got 
his own at last, hey ? ” 


ENGLISH STOGIES 


53 


44 So I am told,” returned the second. 44 Cold, 
isn’t it ? ” 

44 Seasonable for Christmas time. You’re not 
a skater, I suppose ? ” 

44 No. No. Something else to think of. Good¬ 
morning ! ” 

Not another word. That was their meeting, 
their conversation, and their parting. 

Scrooge was at first inclined to be surprised that 
the Spirit should attach importance to conversa¬ 
tions apparently so trivial; but feeling assured 
that it must have some hidden purpose, he set 
himself to consider what it was likely to be. It 
could scarcely be supposed to have any bearing 
on the death of Jacob, his old partner, for that 
was Past, and this Ghost’s province was the 
Future. 

He looked about in that very place for his own 
image ; but another man stood in his accustomed 
corner, and though the clock pointed to his usual 
time of day for being there, he saw no likeness 
of himself among the multitudes that poured in 
through the Porch. It gave him little surprise, 
however, for he had been revolving in his mind 
a change of life, and he thought and hoped he 
saw his new-born resolutions carried out in this. 

They left this busy scene, and went into an 
obscure part of the town, to a low shop where 
iron, old rags, bottles, bones, and greasy offal 
were brought. 


54 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


A gray-haired rascal, of great age, sat smoking 
his pipe. 

Scrooge and the Phantom came into the pres¬ 
ence of this man, just as a woman with a heavy 
bundle slunk into the shop. But she had scarcely 
entered, when another woman, similarly laden, 
came in too; and she was closely followed by a 
man in faded black. After a short period of 
blank astonishment, in which the old man with 
the pipe had joined them, they all three burst 
into a laugh. 

“ Let the charwoman alone to be the first! ” 
cried she Avho had entered first. 44 Let the laun¬ 
dress alone to be the second; and let the under¬ 
taker’s man alone to be the third. Look here, 
old Joe, here’s a chance! If we haven’t all three 
met here without meaning it! ” 

“ You couldn’t have met in a better place. You 
were made free of it long ago, you know; and the 
other two ain’t strangers. What have you got to 
sell? What have you got to sell? ” 

44 Half a minute’s patience, Joe, and you shall 
see.” 

44 What odds, then ! What odds, Mrs. Dilber ? ” 
said the woman. 44 Every person has a right to take 
care of themselves. He always did! Who’s the 
worse for the loss of a few things like these ? Not 
a dead man I suppose.” 

Mrs. Dilber, whose manner was remarkable for 
general propitiation, said: — 


ENGLISH STORIES 


55 


“No, indeed, ma’am; if he wanted to keep ’em 
after he was dead, a wicked old screw, why wasn’t 
he natural in his lifetime ? If he had been, he’d 
have had somebody to look after him when he 
was struck with Death, instead of lying gasping 
out his last there, alone by himself.” 

“ It’s the truest word that ever was spoke,” 
said Mrs. Dilber. “ It’s a judgment on him.” 

“ I wish it was a little heavier judgment,” re¬ 
plied the woman; “ and it should have been, you 
may depend upon it, if I could have laid my 
hands on anything else. Open that bundle, old 
Joe, and let me know the value of it. Speak out 
plain. I’m not afraid to be the first, nor afraid 
for them to see it.” 

Joe went down on his knees for the greater 
convenience of opening the bundle, and dragged 
out a large, heavy roll of some dark stuff. 

“What do you call this? ” said Joe. “Bed 
curtains ! ” 

“ Ah ! Bed curtains! Don’t drop that oil upon 
the blankets, now.” 

“His blankets? ” asked Joe. 

“ Whose else’s do you think? ” replied the 
woman. “He isn’t likely to take cold without 
’em, I dare say. Ah! You may look through 
that shirt till your eyes ache ; but you won’t find 
a hole in it, nor a threadbare place. It’s the best 
he had, and a fine one, too. They’d have wasted it 
by dressing him up in it, if it hadn’t been for me.” 


56 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


Scrooge listened to this dialogue in horror. 

“ Spirit! ” said Scrooge, shuddering from head 
to foot. “ I see, I see. The case of this unhappy 
man might be my own. My life tends that way 
now. Merciful Heaven, what is this? ” 

The scene had changed, and now he almost 
touched a bed. A pale light, rising in the outer 
air, fell straight upon the bed; and on it, un¬ 
watched, unwept, uncared for, was the body of 
this plundered, unknown man. 

“ Spirit, let me see some tenderness connected 
with a death, or this dark chamber, Spirit, will be 
forever present to me.” 

The Ghost conducted him to poor Bob Cratchit’s 
house, — the dwelling he had visited before, — 
and found the mother and the children seated 
round the fire. 

Quiet. Very quiet. The noisy little Cratchits 
were as still as statues in one corner, and sat 
looking up at Peter, who had a book before him. 
The mother and her daughters were engaged in 
needlework. But surely they were very quiet! 

“‘And He took a child, and set him in the 
midst of them.’ ” 

Where had Scrooge heard those words? He 
had not dreamed them. The boy must have read 
them out, as he and the Spirit crossed the thresh¬ 
old. Why did he not go on ? 

The mother laid her work upon the table, and 
put her hand up to her face. 


ENGLISH STORIES 


57 


“ The color hurts my eyes,” she said. 

The color ? Ah, poor Tiny Tim ! 

“ They’re better now again,” said Cratchit’s 
wife. “ It makes them weak by candlelight; and 
I wouldn’t show weak eyes to your father when 
he comes home, for the world. It must be near 
his time.” 

“ Tast it, rather,” Peter answered, shutting up 
his book. “ But I think he has walked a little 
slower than he used, these few last evenings, 
mother.” 

“ I have known him walk with — I have known 
him walk with Tiny Tim upon his shoulder very 
fast indeed.” 

“And so have I,” cried Peter. “Often.” 

“ And so have I,” exclaimed another. So had 
all. 

“ But he was very light to carry,” she resumed, 
intent upon her work, “ and his father loved him 
so, that it was no trouble,—no trouble. And 
there is your father at the door! ” 

She hurried out to meet him ; and little Bob in 
his comforter — he had need of it, poor fellow — 
came in. His tea was ready for him on the hob, 
and they all tried who should help him to it most. 
Then the two young Cratchits got upon his knees, 
and laid, each child, a little cheek against his face, 
as if they said, “ Don’t mind it father. Don’t be 
grieved ! ” 

Bob was very cheerful with them, and spoke 


58 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


pleasantly to all the family. He looked at the 
work upon the table, and praised the industry and 
speed of Mrs. Cratchit and the girls. They 
would be done long before Sunday, he said. 

“Sunday! You went to-day, then, Robert?” 
said his wife. 

“ Yes, my dear,” returned Bob. “ I wish you 
could have gone. It would have done you good 
to see how green a place it is. But you’ll see it 
often. I promised him that I would walk there 
on a Sunday. My little, little child ! ” cried Bob. 
“ My little child ! ” 

He broke down all at once. He couldn’t help it. 
If he could have helped it, he and his child would 
have been farther apart, perhaps, than they were. 

“ Specter,” said Scrooge, “ something informs 
me that our parting moment is at hand. I know 
it, but I know not how. Tell me what man that 
was with the covered face whom we saw lying 
dead?” 

The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come con¬ 
veyed him to a dismal, wretched, ruinous church- 
yard. 

The Spirit stood among the graves, and pointed 
down to One. 

“ Before I draw nearer to that stone to which 
you point,” said Scrooge, “ answer me one ques¬ 
tion. Are these the shadows of the things that 
Will be, or are they shadows of the things that 
May be only ? ” 


ENGLISH STORIES 


59 


Still the Ghost pointed downward to the grave 
• by which it stood. 

“ Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, 
to which, if persevered in, they must lead,” said 
Scrooge. “ But if the courses be departed from, 
the ends will change. Say it is thus with what 
you show me ! ” 

The Spirit was immovable as ever. 

Scrooge crept towards it, trembling as he went; 
and, following the finger, read upon the stone of 
the neglected grave his own name, — Ebenezer 
Scrooge. 

“ Am I that man who lay upon the bed ? ” he 
cried, upon his knees. “No, Spirit! Oh, no, 
no ! ” 

“ Spirit ! ” he cried, tight clutching at its robe, 
“ hear me ! I am not the man I was. I will not be 
the man I must have been but for this intercourse. 
Why show me this, if I am past all hope ? ” 

For the first time the kind hand faltered. 

“ I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try 
to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, 
the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all 
three shall strive within me. I will not shut out 
the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I may 
sponge away the writing on this stone ! ” 

Holding up his hands in one last prayer to 
have his fate reversed, he saw an alteration in the 
Phantom’s hood and dress. It shrunk, collapsed, 
and dwindled down into a bedpost. 



STAVE FIVE 


THE END OF IT 

Yes, and the bedpost was his own. The bed 
was his own, the room' was his own. Best and 
happiest of all, the Time before him was his own, 
to make amends in ! 

“ I will live in the Past, the Present, and the 
Future ! ” Scrooge repeated, as he scrambled out 
of bed. “ The Spirits of all Three shall strive 
within me. O Jacob Marley ! Heaven and the 
Christmas time be praised for this! I say it on 
my knees, old Jacob ; on my knees ! ” 

He was so fluttered and so glowing with his 
good intentions, that his broken voice would 
scarcely answer to his call. He had been sobbing 
violently in his conflict with the Spirit, and his 
face was wet with tears. 

“ They are not torn down,” cried Scrooge, fold¬ 
ing one of his bed-curtains in his arms, — “ they 
are not torn down, rings and all. They are here 
— I am here — the shadows of the things that 
would have been may be dispelled. They will be. 
I know they will! ” 

His hands were busy with his garments all this 
time ; turning them inside out, putting them on 
60 


ENGLISH S TO HIES 


61 


upside down, tearing them, mislaying them, mak¬ 
ing them parties to every kind of extravagance. 

“ I don’t know what to do! ” cried Scrooge, 
laughing and crying in the same breath, and mak¬ 
ing a perfect Laocoon of himself with his stock¬ 
ings. “ I am as light as a feather, I am as happy 
as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. I am 
as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas 
to everybody! A happy New Year to all the 
world : Hallo here ! Whoop ! Hallo ! ” 

He had frisked into the sitting-room, and was 
now standing there, perfectly winded. 

“ There’s the saucepan that the gruel was in ! ” 
cried Scrooge, starting off again, and going round 
the fireplace. “There’s the door by which the 
Ghost of Jacob Marley entered ! There’s the 
corner where the Ghost of Christmas Present sat! 
There’s the window where I saw the wandering 
Spirits ! It’s all right, it’s all true, it all happened. 
Ha, ha, ha! ” 

He was checked in his transports by the churches 
ringing out the lustiest peals he had ever heard. 

Running to the window, he opened it, and put 
out his head. No fog, no mist; clear, bright, stir¬ 
ring, golden day. 

“ What’s to-day ? ” cried Scrooge, calling down¬ 
ward to a boy in Sunday clothes, who perhaps had 
loitered in to look about him. 

“Eh ?” returned the boy, with all his might of 
wonder. 


62 


HA WTHORNE CLASSICS 


44 What’s to-day, my fine fellow ? ” said Scrooge. 

“ To-day ! ” replied the boy. “ Why, Christ¬ 
mas Day.” 

“ It’s Christmas Day! ” said Scrooge to himself. 
44 I haven’t missed it. Hallo, my fine fellow ! ” 

44 Hallo ! ” returned the boy. 

44 Do you know the Poulterer’s, in the next 
street but one, at the corner?” Scrooge inquired. 

“I should hope I did,” replied the lad. 

44 An intelligent boy! ” said Scrooge. “A remark¬ 
able boy ! Do you know whether they’ve sold the 
prize Turkey that was hanging up there? Not the 
little prize Turkey — the big one ? ” 

44 What, the one as big as me ? ” returned the 
boy. 

44 What a delightful boy ! ” said Scrooge. 44 It’s 
a pleasure to talk to him. Yes, my buck ! ” 

44 It’s hanging there now,” replied the boy. 

44 Is it ? said Scrooge. Go and buy it.” 

44 Walk-ER ! ” 1 exclaimed the boy. 

44 No, no, I am in earnest. Go and buy it, and 
tell ’em to bring it here, that I may give them the 
directions where to take it. Come back with the 
man, and I’ll give you a shilling. Come back with 
him in less than five minutes, and I’ll give you 
half a crown ! ” 

The boy was off like a shot. 

44 I’ll send it to Bob Cratchit’s ! He shan’t 

1 A slang word which shows that you are incredulous. Who 
Walker was is unknown, but he evidently was not noted as a truth 
teller. 


ENGLISH STORIES 


63 


know who sends it. It’s twice the size of Tiny 
Tim. Joe Miller never made such a joke as 
sending it to Bob’s will be ! ” 

The hand in which he wrote the address was 
not a steady one ; but write it he did, somehow, 
and went downstairs to open the street door, ready 
for the coming of the poulterer’s man. 

It was a Turkey ! He never could have stood 
upon his legs, that bird. He would have snapped 
’em short off in a minute, like sticks of sealing- 
wax. 

Scrooge dressed himself 44 all in his best,” and 
at last got out into the streets. The people were 
by this time pouring forth, as he had seen them 
with the Ghost of Christmas Present ; and walk¬ 
ing with his hands behind him, Scrooge regarded 
every one with a delighted smile. He looked so 
irresistibly pleasant, in a word, that three or four 
good-humored fellows said, “ Good morning, sir ! 
A merry Christmas to you ! ” And Scrooge said 
often afterwards, that of all the blithe sounds he 
had ever heard, those were the blithest in his ears. 

In the afternoon, he turned his steps towards 
his nephew’s house. 

He passed the door a dozen times before he had 
the courage to go up and knock. But he made a 
dash, and did it. 

44 Is your master at home, my dear ? ” said 
Scrooge to the girl. Nice girl! Very. 

44 Yes, sir.” 


64 


IIA \YTHORNE CLASSICS 


“ Where is lie, my love ? ” said Scrooge. 

“He’s in the diningroom, sir, along with the 
mistress.” 

“ He knows me,” said Scrooge, with his hand 
already on the dining room lock. “ I'll go in 
here, my dear.” 

“ Fred ! ” said Scrooge. 

Dear heart alive, how his niece by marriage 
started! Scrooge had forgotten, for the mo¬ 
ment, about her sitting in the corner with the 
footstool, or he wouldn't have done it, on any 
account. 

“Why, bless my soul!” cried Fred, “who’s 
that ? ” 

“ It’s I. Your Uncle Scrooge. I have come 
to dinner. AYill you let me in, Fred?” 

Let him in ! It is a mercy he didn’t shake his 
arm off. He was at home in five minutes. Noth¬ 
ing could be heartier. His niece looked just the 
same. So did Topper when he came. So did the 
plump sister, when she came. So did every one, 
when they came. Wonderful party, wonderful 
games, wonderful unanimity, won-der-ful hap¬ 
piness ! 

Lut he was early at the office next morning. 
Oh, he was early there ! If lie could only be 
there first, and catch Bob Cratchit coming late ! 
That was the thing he had set his heart upon. 

And he did it. The clock struck nine. No 
Bob. A quarter past. No Bob. Bob was full 


EN GL I s II s TO R I ES 


65 


eighteen minutes and a half behind his time. 
Scrooge sat with his door wide open, that he 
might see him come into the tank. 

Bob’s hat was off before he opened the door ; 
his comforter, too. He was on his stool in a 
jiffy ; driving away with his pen, as if he were 
trying to overtake nine o'clock. 

“Hallo!” growled Scrooge, in his accustomed 
voice as near as he could feign it. “ What do 
you mean by coming here at this time of day ? ” 

“ I am very sorry, sir,” said Bob. “ I am be¬ 
hind my time.” 

“ You are ? ” repeated Scrooge. “ Yes. I think 
you are. Step this way, sir, if you please.” 

“ It’s only once a year, sir,” pleaded Bob, ap¬ 
pearing from the tank. “ It shall not be repeated. 
1 was making rather merry yesterday, sir.” 

“ Now, I’ll tell you what, my friend. I am not 
going to stand this sort of thing any longer. 
And therefore,” Scrooge continued, leaping from 
his stool, and giving Bob such a dig in the waist¬ 
coat that he staggered back into the tank again, 
— “ and therefore, I am about to raise your 
salary ! ” 

Bob trembled, and got a little nearer to the ruler. 

“A merry Christmas, Bob ! ” said Scrooge, with 
an earnestness that could not be mistaken, as he 
clapped him on the back. “ A merrier Christmas, 
Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you for 
many a year ! I’ll raise your salary, and endeavor 


F 


66 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


to assist your struggling family, and we will 
discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a 
Christmas bowl of smoking bishop, Bob ! Make 
up the fires, and buy another coal scuttle before 
you dot another i, Bob Cratchit ! ” 

Scrooge was better than his word. He did it 
all, and infinitely more ; and to Tiny Tim, who 
did not die, he was a second father. He became 
as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a 
man as the good old city knew, or any other good 
old city, town, or borough in the good old world. 
Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, 
but his own heart laughed, and that was quite 
enough for him. 

He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but 
lived in that respect upon the total abstinence prin¬ 
ciple ever afterwards ; and it was always said of 
him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if 
any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that 
be truly said of us, and all of us ! And so, as 
Tiny Tim observed, God bless us, every one! 


THE HOUSE AND THE BRAIN 


BY E. BDLWER LYTTON 

A friend of mine, who is a man of letters and 
a philosopher, said to me one day, as if between 
jest and earnest, u Fancy ! since we last met 1 
have discovered a haunted house in the midst of 
London.” 

“ Really haunted ? and by what, — ghosts ? ” 

“ Well, I can’t answer these questions ; all I 
know is this : six weeks ago I and my wife were 
in search of a furnished apartment. Passing a 
quiet street, we saw on the window of one of the 
houses a bill, ‘Apartments Furnished.’ The 
situation suited us ; we entered the house, liked 
the rooms, engaged them by the week, and left 
them the third day. No power on earth could 
have reconciled my wife to stay longer; and I 
don’t wonder at it.” 

“ What did you see ? ” 

“ Excuse me ; I have no desire to be ridiculed 
as a superstitious dreamer, nor, on the other hand, 
could I ask you to accept on my affirmation what 
you would hold to be incredible, without the evi 
dence of your own senses. Let me only say this : 

67 


68 


HA WTUORNE CLASSICS 


it was not so much what we saw or heard (in 
which you might fairly suppose that we were the 
dupes of our own excited fancy, or the victims of 
imposture in others) that drove us away, as it was 
an undefinable terror which seized both of us 
whenever we passed by the door of a certain un¬ 
furnished room, in which we neither saw nor heard 
anything ; and the strangest marvel of all was, 
that for once in my life I agreed with my wife, 
silly woman though she be, and allowed after the 
third night that it was impossible to stay a fourth 
in that house. Accordingly, on the fourth morn¬ 
ing I summoned the woman who kept the house 
and attended on us, and told her that the rooms 
did not quite suit us, and we would not stay out 
our week. She said dryly, ‘ 1 know why ; you 
have stayed longer than any other lodger. Few 
ever stayed a second night; none before you a 
third. But I take it they have been very kind to 
you.’ 

444 They, — who ? ’ I asked, affecting a smile. 

444 Why, they who haunt the house, whoever 
they are ; I don’t mind them ; I remember them 
many years ago, when I lived in this house not as 
a servant; but I know they will be the death of 
me some day. I don’t care, — I’m old and must 
die soon anyhow ; and then I shall be with them, 
and in this house still.’ The woman spoke with 
so dreary a calmness, that really it was a sort of 
awe that prevented my conversing with her fur- 


ENGLISH STORIES 


69 


tlier. I paid for my week, and* too happy were I 
and my wife to get off so cheaply.” 

“ You excite my curiosity,” said 1 ; “nothing I 
should like better than to sleep in a haunted house. 
Pray give me the address of the one which you 
left so ignominiously.” 

My friend gave me the address; and when we 
parted 1 walked straight toward the house thus 
indicated. 

It is situated on the north side of Oxford Street, 1 
in a dull but respectable thoroughfare. I found 
the house shut up; no bill at the window, and no 
response to my knock. As I was turning away, 
a beer-boy, collecting pewter pots at the neighbor¬ 
ing areas, 2 said to me, “ Do you want any one at 
that house, sir? ” 

“ Yes, I heard it was to be let.” 

“ Let! Why, the woman who kept it is dead; 
has been dead these three weeks; and no one can 

be found to stay there, though Mr. J-offered 

ever so much. He offered mother, who chars 3 
for him, XI a week just to open and shut the 
windows, and she would not.” 

“ Would not! and why? ” 

1 A long street to the north of that part of London best known 
to the world. North of Oxford Street there is much London, but 
as a rule it is not so interesting as the part between Oxford Street 
and Holborn, its continuation, and the river. 

2 The little spaces in front of the houses, usually lower than 
the street, by which one gets to the basement doors. 

8 The same word as the New England chore. A charwoman is 
one who comes in to do house-keeping work. 



70 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


“ The house is haunted ; and the old woman 
who kept it was found dead in her bed with her 
eyes wide open. They say the Devil strangled 
her. ” 

“Pooh ! You speak of Mr. J-. Is he the 

owner of the house? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Where does he live ? ” 

“In G-Street, No. — 

“ What is he ? — in any business? ” 

“No, sir; nothing particular; a single gentle¬ 
man.” 

1 gave the pot-boy the gratuity earned by his 

liberal information, and proceeded to Mr. J- 

in G- Street, which was close by the street 

that boasted the haunted house. I was lucky 

enough to find Mr. J-at home; an elderly 

man with intelligent countenance and prepossess¬ 
ing manners. 

I communicated my name and my business 
frankly. I said I heard the house was consid¬ 
ered to be haunted ; that I had a strong desire 
to examine a house with so equivocal a reputa¬ 
tion ; that I should be greatly obliged if he would 
allow me to hire it, though only for a night. I 
was willing to pay for that privilege whatever he 

might be inclined to ask. “ Sir,” said Mr. J- 

with great courtesy, “ the house is at your service 
for as short or as long a time as you please. Rent 
is out of the question; the obligation will be on 







ENGLISH STOIilES 


71 


my side, should you be able to discover the cause 
of the strange phenomena which at present de¬ 
prive it of all value. I cannot let it, for I cannot 
even get a servant to keep it in order or answer 
the door. Unluckily, the house is haunted, if I 
may use that expression, not only by night but 
by day ; though at night the disturbances are of 
a more unpleasant and sometimes of a more alarm¬ 
ing character. The poor old woman who died in 
it three weeks ago was a pauper whom I took out 
of a workhouse ; for in her childhood she had 
been known to some of my family, and had once 
been in such good circumstances that she had 
rented that house of my uncle. She was a woman 
of superior education and strong mind, and was 
the only person I could ever induce to remain in 
the house. Indeed, since her death, which was 
sudden, and the coroner’s -inquest, which gave it 
a notoriety in the neigborhood, I have so despaired 
of finding any person to take charge of it, much 
more a tenant, that I would willingly let it rent 
free for a year to any one who would pay its rates 1 
and taxes.” 

“ How long ago did the house acquire this 
character? ” 

“ That I can scarcely tell you, but many years 
since; the old woman I spoke of said it was 
haunted when she rented it, between thirty and 
forty years ago. The fact is, that my life has been 
1 Rates differ from taxes in being local. 


11A WTIlOliNE CLASSICS 


VI 


spent in the East Indies, and in the civil service 
of the Company. 1 I returned to England last 
year, on inheriting the fortune of an uncle, 
amongst whose possessions was the house in 
question. I found it shut up and uninhabited. 
1 was told that it was haunted, and no one would 
inhabit it. I smiled at what seemed to me so idle 
a story. I spent some money in repainting and 
roofing it, added to its old-fashioned furniture a 
few modern articles, advertised it, and obtained a 
lodger for a year. He was a colonel retired on 
half pay. He came in with his family, a son and 
a daughter, and four or five servants; they all left 
the house the next day : and although they de¬ 
poned 2 that they had all seen something different, 
that something was equally terrible to all. I 
really could not in conscience sue, or even blame, 
the colonel for breach of agreement. Then I put 
in the old woman I have spoken of, and she was 
empowered to let the house in apartments. I 
never had one lodger who stayed more than three 
days. I do not tell you their stories; to no two 
lodgers have exactly the same phenomena been 
repeated. It is better that you should judge for 
yourself, than enter the house with an imagina- 

1 The English possessions in India were formerly managed by 
the East India Company. By 1858 it became clear that the affair 
was too vast to be carried on by a private company, and the Eng-^ 
Hfth Government took over the charge of India and the East Indies. 
The Company had a military and a civil service. 

2 Stated, more especially, upon oath. 


ENGLISH STORIES 


73 


tion influenced by previous narratives ; only be pre¬ 
pared to see and to hear something or other, and 
take whatever precautions you yourself please.” 

“ Have you never had a curiosity yourself to 
pass a night in that house?” 

“ Yes; I passed, not a night, but three hours in 
broad daylight alone in that house. My curiosity 
is not satisfied, but it is quenched. I have no 
desire to renew the experiment. You cannot 
complain, you see, sir, that I am not sufficiently 
candid; and unless your interest be exceedingly 
eager and your nerves unusually strong, 1 hon¬ 
estly add that I advise you not to pass a night in 
that house.” 

“ My interest is exceedingly keen,” said I; 
“and though only a coward will boast of his 
nerves in situations wholly unfamiliar to him, yet 
my nerves have been seasoned in such variety of 
danger that I have the right to rely on them, even 
in a haunted house.” 

Mr. J-said very little more; he took the 

keys of the house out of his bureau, and gave 
them to me; and, thanking him cordially for his 
frankness and his urbane concession to my wish, 
I carried off my prize. 

Impatient for the experiment, as soon as I 
reached home I summoned my confidential ser¬ 
vant,— a young man of gay spirits, fearless tem¬ 
per, and as free from superstitious prejudice as 
any one I could think of. 



74 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


“F-,” said I, “yon remember in Germany 

how disappointed we were at not finding a ghost 
in that old castle, which was said to be haunted 
by a headless apparition? Well, I have heard of 
a house in London which, I have reason to hope, 
is decidedly haunted. I mean to sleep there to¬ 
night. From what I hear, there is no doubt that 
something will allow itself to be seen or to be 
heard, — something perhaps excessively horrible. 
Do you think, if I take you with me, I may rely 
on your presence of mind, whatever may happen?” 

“ O sir! pray trust me ! ” said he, grinning 
with delight. 

“Very well, then, here are the keys of the house ; 
this is the address. Go now, select for me any 
bedroom you please; and since the house has 
not been inhabited for weeks, make up a good 
fire, air the bed well, see, of course, that there are 
candles as well as fuel. Take with you my re¬ 
volver and my dagger, — so much for my weapons, 
— arm yourself equally well; and if we are not a 
match for a dozen ghosts, we shall be but a sorry 
couple of Englishmen.” 

I was engaged for the rest of the day on busi¬ 
ness so urgent that I had not leisure to think 
much on the nocturnal adventure to which I had 
plighted my honor. I dined alone and very late, 
and while dining read, as is my habit. The 
volume 1 selected was one of Macaulay’s essays. 
I thought to myself that I would take the book 



ENGLISH STORIES 


75 


with me; there was so much of healthfulness in 
the style, and practical life in the subjects, that it 
would serve as an antidote against the influences 
of superstitious fancy. 

Accordingly, about half past nine, I put the 
book into my pocket, and strolled leisurely tow¬ 
ard the haunted house. I took with me a fa¬ 
vorite dog; an exceedingly sharp, bold, and vigi¬ 
lant bull-terrier, a dog fond of prowling about 
strange ghostly corners and passages at night in 
search of rats, a dog of dogs for a ghost. 

It was a summer night, but chilly, the sky some¬ 
what gloomy and overcast; still there was a 
moon, — faint and sickly, but still a moon ; and if 
the clouds permitted, after midnight it would be 
brighter. 

I reached the house, knocked, and my servant 
opened with a cheerful smile. 

“All right, sir, and very comfortable.” 

“Oh!” said I, rather disappointed; “have you 
not seen or heard anything remarkable ? ” 

“Well, sir, I must own I have heard something 
queer.” 

“ What ? — what ? ” 

“ The sound of feet pattering behind me ; and 
once or twice small noises like whispers close at 
my ear ; nothing more.” 

“ You are not at all frightened ? ” 

“ I! not a bit of it, sir! ” And the man’s 
bold look reassured me on one point, namely, 


76 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


that, happen what might, he would not desert 
me. 

We were in the hall, the street door closed, and 
my attention was now drawn to my dog. He 
had at first run in eagerly enough, but had 
sneaked back to the door, and was scratching 
and whining to get out. After I had patted him 
on the head and encouraged him gently, the dog 
seemed to reconcile himself to the situation, and 
followed me and F-through the house, but keep¬ 

ing close at my heels, instead of hurrying inquisi¬ 
tively in advance, which was his usual and normal 
habit in all strange places. We first visited the 
subterranean apartments, the kitchen and other 
offices, 1 and especially the cellars, in which last 
were two or three bottles of wine still left in a 
bin, covered with cobwebs, and evidently, by 
their appearance, undisturbed for many years. 
It was clear that the ghosts were not winebib- 
bers. For the rest, we discovered nothing of 
interest. There was a gloomy little back yard, 
with very high walls. The stones of this yard 
were very damp; and what with the damp, and 
what with the dust and smoke-grime on the pave¬ 
ment, our feet left a slight impression where 
we passed. And now appeared the first strange 
phenomenon witnessed by myself in this strange 
abode. I saw, just before me, the print of a foot 

1 The common word in England for that part of the house 
devoted to the household work, 



ENGLISH STORIES 


77 


suddenly form itself, as it were. I stopped, 
caught hold of my servant, and pointed to it. 
In advance of that footprint as suddenly dropped 
another. We both saw it. I advanced quickly 
to the place; the footprint kept advancing be¬ 
fore me ; a small footprint, — the foot of a child ; 
the impression was too faint thoroughly to distin¬ 
guish the shape, but it seemed to us both that it 
was the print of a naked foot. This phenomenon 
ceased when we arrived at the opposite wall, nor 
did it repeat itself when we returned. We re¬ 
mounted the stairs, and entered the rooms on the 
ground floor, — a dining-parlor, a small back par¬ 
lor, and a still smaller third room, that had prob¬ 
ably been appropriated to a footman, — all still 
as death. We then visited the drawing-rooms, 
which seemed fresh and new. In the front room 

I seated myself in an armchair. F-placed 

on the table the candlestick with which he had 
lighted us. I told him to shut the door. As he 
turned to do so, a chair opposite to me moved 
from the wall quickly and noiselessly, and dropped 
itself about a yard from my own chair, imme¬ 
diately fronting it. 

“ Why, this is better than the turning tables,” 1 
said I, with a half-laugh ; and as I laughed, my 
dog put back his head and howled. 

1 A spiritualistic phenomenon which excited much attention in 
the middle of the last century. Persons sat about a table with 
their hands on the top and just touching each other: then the 
table began to turn round. 



78 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


F-, coming back, had not observed the 

movement of the chair. He employed himself 
now in stilling the dog. I continued to gaze on 
the chair, and fancied I saw on it a pale, blue, 
misty outline of a human figure; but an outline 
so indistinct that I could only distrust my own 
vision. The dog was now quiet. 

“ Put back the chair opposite to me,” said I to 
F-, “put it back to the wall.” 

F-obeyed. “Was that you, sir?” said he, 

turning 1 abruptly. 

“ I, —what?” 

“ Why, something struck me. I felt it sharply 
on the shoulder, just here.” 

“No,” said I; “but we have jugglers present; 
and though we may not discover their tricks, we 
shall catch them before they frighten us” 

We did not stay long in the drawing-rooms; in 
fact, they felt so damp and so chilly that I was 
glad to get to the fire upstairs. We locked the 
doors of the drawing-rooms, — a precaution which, 
I should observe, we had taken with all the rooms 
we had searched below. The bedroom my ser¬ 
vant had selected for me was the best on the 
floor ; a large one, with two windows fronting 
the street. The four-posted bed, which took up 
no inconsiderable space, was opposite to the fire, 
which burned clear and bright; a door in the 
wall to the left, between the bed and the window, 
communicated with the room which my servant 





ENGLISH STORIES 


79 


appropriated to himself. This last was a small 
room with a sofa-bed, and had no communication 
with the landing-place; no other door but that 
which conducted to the bedroom I was to occupy. 
On either side of my fireplace was a cupboard, 
without locks, flush with the wall, and covered 
with the same dull-brown paper. We examined 
these cupboards; only hooks to suspend female 
dresses, — nothing else. We sounded the walls; 
evidently solid, — the outer walls of the building. 
Having finished the survey of these apartments, 
warmed myself a few moments, and lighted my 

cigar, I then, still accompanied by F-, went 

forth to complete my reconnoitre. In the land- 
ing-place there was another door; it was closed 
firmly. “Sir,” said my servant in surprise, “I 
unlocked this door with all the others when I first 
came ; it cannot have got locked from the inside, 
for it is a — ” 

Before he had finished his sentence, the door, 
which neither of us then was touching, opened 
quietly of itself. We looked at each other a 
single instant. The same thought seized both; 
some human agency might be detected here. I 
rushed in first, my servant followed. A small, 
blank, dreary room without furniture, a few 
empty boxes and hampers in a corner, a small 
window, the shutters closed, — not even a fire¬ 
place,— no other door but that by which we 
had entered, no carpet on the floor, and the 



80 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


floor seemed very old, uneven, worm-eaten, 
mended here and there, as was shown by the 
whiter patches on the wood ; but no living being, 
and no visible place in which a living being could 
have hidden. As Ave stood gazing round, the 
door by which we had entered closed as quietly 
as it had before opened; we were imprisoned. 

For the first time I felt a creep of undefinable- 
horror. Not so my servant. “ Why, they don’t 
think to trap us, sir; I could break that trumpery 
door with a kick of my foot.” 

“ Try first if it will open to your hand,” said I, 
shaking off the vague apprehension that had seized 
me, “while 1 open the shutters and see Avhat is 
Avithout.” 

I unbarred the shutters: the window looked 
on the little back yard I have before described ; 
there Avas no ledge without, nothing but sheer 
descent. No man getting out of that Avindow 
Avould have found any footing till he had fallen 
on the stones beloAv. 

F- meanwhile Avas vainly attempting to 

open the door. He iioav turned round to me 
and asked my permission to use force. And I 
should here state, in justice to the servant, that, 
far from evincing any superstitious terror, his 
nerve, composure, and even gayety amidst cir¬ 
cumstances so extraordinary, compelled my ad¬ 
miration, and made me congratulate n^self on 
having secured a companion in every way fitted 



ENGLISH STORIES 


81 


to the occasion. I willingly gave him the per¬ 
mission he required. But, though he was a 
remarkably strong man, his force was as idle as 
his milder efforts ; the door did not even shake 
to his stoutest kick. Breathless and panting, he 
desisted. I then tried the door myself, equally 
in vain. As I ceased from the effort, again that 
creep of horror came over me; but this time it 
was more cold and stubborn. I felt as if some 
strange and ghastly exhalation were rising from 
the chinks of that rugged floor and filling the 
atmosphere with a venomous influence hostile to 
human life. The door now very slowly and 
quietly opened as of its own accord. We precipi¬ 
tated ourselves into the landing-place. We both 
saw a large, pale light — as large as the human 
figure, but shapeless and unsubstantial — move 
before us and ascend the stairs that led from the 
landing into the attics. I followed the light, and 
my servant followed me. It entered, to the right 
of the landing, a small garret, of which the door 
stood open. I entered in the same instant. The 
light then collapsed into a small globule, exceed¬ 
ingly brilliant and vivid; rested a moment on a 
bed in the corner, quivered, and vanished. We ap¬ 
proached the bed and examined it, — a half-tester, 1 

1 A tester is a canopy over a bed. In a four-poster (p. 78) it is 
supported by the four posts. Curtains then convert the bed into 
a separate little room, such an arrangement being very comfortable 
in the half-heated houses of our ancestors. A half-tester bedstead 
had only a half canopy, supported by two posts. 

G 


82 


IIA WTHORNE CLASSICS 


such as is commonly found in attics devoted to 
servants. On the drawers that stood near it 
we perceived an old faded silk kerchief, with the 
needle still left in the rent half repaired. The 
kerchief was covered with dust; probably it had 
belonged to the old woman who had last died in 
that house, and this might have been her sleep¬ 
ing room. I had sufficient curiosity to open the 
drawers; there were a few odds and ends of 
female dress, and two letters tied round with a 
narrow ribbon of faded yellow. I took the liberty 
to possess myself of the letters. We found nothing 
else in the room worth noticing, nor did the light 
reappear; but we distinctly heard, as we turned 
to go, a pattering footfall on the floor just before 
us. We went through the other attics (in all 
four), the footfall still preceding us. Nothing to 
be seen, nothing but the footfall heard. I had 
the letters in my hand; just as I was descending 
the stairs I distinctly felt my wrist seized, and a 
faint, soft effort made to draw the letters from my 
clasp. I only held them the more tightly, and 
the effort ceased. 

We regained the bedchamber appropriated to 
myself, and I then remarked that my dog had not 
followed us when we had left it. He was thrust¬ 
ing himself close to the fire and trembling. I was 
impatient to examine the letters ; and while I read 
them my servant opened a little box in which he 
had deposited the weapons I had ordered him 


ENGLISH STOBIES 


88 


to bring, took them out, placed them on a 
table close at my bed-head, and then occupied 
himself in soothing the dog, who, however, seemed 
to heed him very little. 

The letters were short; they were dated, — the 
dates exactly thirty-five years ago. They were 
evidently from a lover to his mistress, or a hus¬ 
band to some young wife. Not only the terms of 
expression, but a distinct reference to a former 
voyage indicated the writer to have been a sea¬ 
farer. The spelling and handwriting were those of 
a man imperfectly educated ; but still the language 
itself was forcible. In the expressions of endear¬ 
ment there was a kind of rough, wild love ; but 
here and there were dark, unintelligible hints at 
some secret not of love, — some secret that 
seemed of crime. “ We ought to love each other,” 
was one of the sentences I remember, “ for how 
every one else would execrate us if all was known.” 
Again : u Don’t let any one be in the same room 
with you at night, — you talk in your sleep.” 
And again : “ What’s done can’t be undone : and 
I tell you there’s nothing against us, unless the 
dead could come to life.” Here was interlined, in 
a better handwriting (a female’s), “They do !” 
At the end of the letter latest in date the same 
female hand had written these words: “Lost at 
sea the 4th of June, the same day as — ” 

I put down the letters, and began to muse over 
their contents. 


84 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


Fearing, however, that the train of thought into 
which I fell might unsteady my nerves, 1 fully 
determined to keep my mind in a fit state to cope 
with whatever of marvelous the advancing night 
might bring, forth. 1 roused myself, laid the 
letters on the table, stirred up the fire, which was 
still bright and cheering, and opened my volume 
of Macaulay. I read quietly enough, till about 
half-past eleven. I then threw myself dressed 
upon the bed, and told my servant he might retire 
to his own room, but must keep himself awake. 
I bade him leave open the doors between the two 
rooms. Thus, alone, I kept two candles burning 
on the table by my bed-head. 1 placed my watch 
beside the weapons, and calmly resumed my 
Macaulay. Opposite to me the fire burned clear ; 
and on the hearth-rug, seemingly asleep, lay the 
dog. In about twent}^ minutes I felt an exceed¬ 
ingly cold air pass by my cheek, like a sudden 
draught. I fancied the door to my right, com¬ 
municating with the landing-place, must have got 
open ; but no, it was closed. I then turned my 
glance to the left, and saw the flame of the candles 
violently swayed as by a wind. At the same 
moment the watch beside the revolver softly slid 
from the table, — softly, softly, — no visible hand, 
— it was gone. I sprang up, seizing the revolver 
with the t>ne hand, the dagger with the other : I 
was not willing that my weapons should share the 
fate of the watch. Thus armed, I looked round 


ENGLISH STORIES 


85 


the floor : no sign of the watch. Three slow, 
loud, distinct knocks were now heard at the bed¬ 
head ; my servant called out, u Is that you, sir ? ” 

u No ; be on your guard.” 

The dog now roused himself and sat on his 
haunches, his ears moving quickly backward and 
forward. He kept his eye fixed on me with a 
look so strange that he concentrated all my atten¬ 
tion on himself. Slowly he rose, all his hair 
bristling, and stood perfectly rigid, and with the 
same wild stare. I had no time, however, to ex¬ 
amine the dog. Present^ my servant emerged 
from his room ; and if I ever saw horror in the 
human face, it was then. 1 should not have 
recognized him had we met in the streets, so 
altered was every lineament. He passed by me 
quickly, saying in a whisper that seemed scarcely 
to come from his lips, “ Run ! run ! it is after me ! ” 
He gained the door to the landing, pulled it open, 
and rushed forth. I followed him into the land¬ 
ing involuntarily, calling him to stop ; but, with¬ 
out heeding me, he bounded down the stairs, 
clinging to the balusters and taking several steps 
at a time. I heard, where I stood, the street door 
open, heard it again clap to. I was left alone in 
the haunted house. 

It was but for a moment that I remained unde¬ 
cided whether or not to follow my servant; pride 
and curiosity alike forbade so dastardly a flight. 
I re-entered my room, closing the door after me, 


86 


IIA WTHORNE CLASSICS 


and proceeded cautiously into tlie interior cham¬ 
ber. I encountered nothing to justify my servant’s 
terror. I again carefully examined the walls, to 
see if there were any concealed door. I could find 
no trace of one, — not even a seam in the dull- 
brown paper with which the room was hung. How 
then had the thing, whatever it was, which had 
so scared him, obtained ingress, except through 
my own chamber ? 

I returned to my room, shut and locked the door 
that opened upon the interior one, and stood on 
the hearth, expectant and prepared. I now per¬ 
ceived that the dog had slunk into an angle of the 
wall, and was pressing close against it, as if literally 
striving to force his way into it. I approached the 
animal and spoke to it; the poor brute was evidently 
beside itself with terror. It showed all its teeth, 
the slaver dropping from its jaws, and would cer¬ 
tainly have bitten me if I had touched it. It did 
not seem to recognize me. Whoever has seen at 
the Zoological Gardens a rabbit fascinated by a 
serpent, cowering in a corner, may form some idea 
of the anguish which the dog exhibited. Finding 
all efforts to soothe the animal in vain, and fearing 
that his bite might be as venomous in that state 
as if in the madness of hydrophobia, I left him alone, 
placed my weapons on the table beside the fire, 
seated myself, and recommenced my Macaulay. 

Perhaps, in order not to appear seeking credit 
for a courage, or rather a coolness, which the 


ENGLISH STORIES 


87 


reader may conceive I exaggerate, I may be par¬ 
doned if I pause to indulge in one or two egotistical 
remarks. 

As I hold presence of mind, or what is called 
courage, to be precisely proportioned to familiarity 
with the circumstances that lead to it, so I should 
say that I had been long sufficiently familiar with 
all experiments that appertain to the marvelous. I 
had witnessed many very extraordinary phenomena 
in various parts of the world, — phenomena that 
would be either totally disbelieved if I stated 

them, or ascribed to supernatural agencies. Now, 
my theory is, that the supernatural is the impossi¬ 
ble, and that what is called supernatural is only 
a something in the laws of nature of which we 
have been hitherto ignorant. Therefore, if a ghost 
rise before me, I have not the right to say, “ So, 

then, the supernatural is possible,” but rather, 
“ So, then, the apparition of a ghost is, contrary 
to received opinion, within the laws of nature, 
namely, not supernatural.” 

Now, in all that I had hitherto witnessed, and 
indeed in all the wonders which the amateurs 1 of 
mystery in our age record as facts, a material liv¬ 
ing agency is always required. On the Continent 
you will find still magicians who assert that they 
can raise spirits. Assume for the moment that 
they assert truly, still the living material form of 
the magician is present ; and he is the material 
1 Like dilettante , the word means at bottom a lover. 


88 


IIA WTHORNE CL A SSICS 


agency by which, from some constitutional pecul¬ 
iarities, certain strange phenomena are represented 
to your natural senses. 

Accept, again, as truthful the tales of spirit 
manifestation in America, 1 — musical or other 
sounds, writings on paper, produced by no dis¬ 
cernible hand, articles of furniture moved without 
apparent human agency, or the actual sight and 
touch of hands, to which no bodies seem to belong, 
— still there must be found the medium, or living 
being, with constitutional peculiarities capable of 
obtaining these signs. In fine, in all such marvels, 
supposing even that there is no imposture, there 
must be a human being like ourselves, by whom 
or through whom the effects presented to human 
beings are produced. It is so with the now familiar 
phenomena of mesmerism 2 or electro-biology ; 3 
the mind of the person operated on is affected 
through a material living agent. Nor, supposing 
it true that a mesmerized patient can respond to 
the will or passes of a mesmerizer a hundred miles 


1 Spiritualism in America came prominently before the public 
about 1850, and for a good many years aroused much attention. It 
has always shared public interest with other phenomena, some 
of which are mentioned in the following lines. 

2 Or animal magnetism. From Mesmer (1733-1815) a man who 
brought forward examples of hypnotic power before any scientific 
investigation had been given to the matter; there is mention of 
them p. 101. 

3 A name formerly given to a kind of mesmeric phenomena. It 
has nothing in common with what we now think of as electric or 
biological. See, however, p. 103. 


ENGLISH STORIES 


89 


distant, is the response less occasioned by a mate¬ 
rial being. It may be through a material fluid, 
call it Electric, call it Odic, call it what you will, 
which has the power of traversing space and passing 
obstacles, that the material effect is communicated 
from one to the other. Hence, all that I had 
hitherto witnessed, or expected to witness, in this 
strange house, I believed to be occasioned through 
some agency or medium as mortal as myself; and 
this idea necessarily prevented the awe with which 
those who regard as supernatural things that are 
not within the ordinary operations of nature might 
have been impressed by the adventures of that 
memorable night. 

As, then, it was my conjecture that all that was 
presented, or would be presented, to my senses, 
must originate in some human being gifted by 
constitution with the power so to present them, 
and having some motive so to do, I felt an interest 
in my theory which, in its way, was rather philo¬ 
sophical than superstitious. And I can sincerely 
say that I was in as tranquil a temper for obser¬ 
vation as any practical experimentalist could be in 
awaiting the effects of some rare, though perhaps 
perilous, chemical combination. Of course, the 
more 1 kept my mind detached from fancy, the 
more the temper fitted for observation would be 
obtained ; and I therefore riveted eye and thought 
on the strong daylight sense in the page of my 
Macaulay. 


90 


IIAWTIIOENE CLASSICS 


I now became aware that something interposed 
between the page and the light: the page was 
overshadowed. I looked up and I saw what I 
shall find it very difficult, perhaps impossible, to 
describe. 

It was a darkness shaping itself out of the air 
in very undefined outline. I cannot say it was of 
a human form, and yet it had more of a resem¬ 
blance to a human form, or rather shadow, than 
anything else. As it stood, wholly apart and dis¬ 
tinct from the air and the light around it, its 
dimensions seemed gigantic; the summit nearly 
touched the ceiling. While I gazed, a feeling of 
intense cold seized me. An iceberg before me 
could not more have chilled me ; nor could the 
cold of an iceberg have been more purely physical. 
I feel convinced that it was not the cold caused by 
fear. As I continued to gaze, I thought — but 
this I cannot say with precision — that I distin¬ 
guished two eyes looking down on me from the 
height. One moment I seemed to distinguish 
them clearly, the next they seemed gone ; but two 
rays of a pale blue light frequently shot through 
the darkness, as from the height on which I half 
believed, half doubted, that I had encountered 
the eyes. 

I strove to speak ; my voice utterly failed me. 
I could only think to myself, “ Is Jbhis fear ? it is 
not fear ! ” I strove to rise, in vain ; I felt as if 
weighed down by an irresistible force. Indeed, 


ENGLISH ST OB IE S 


91 


my impression was that of an immense and over¬ 
whelming power opposed to my volition ; that 
sense of utter inadequacy to cope with a force be¬ 
yond men-s, which one may feel physically in a 
storm at sea, in a conflagration, or when confront¬ 
ing some terrible wild beast, or rather, perhaps, 
the shark of the ocean, I felt morally. Opposed 
to my will was another will, as far superior to its 
strength as storm, fire, and shark are superior in 
material force to the force of men. 

And now, as this impression grew on me, now 
came, at last, horror, — horror to a degree that no 
words can convey. Still I retained pride, if not 
courage; and in my own mind I said, “ This is 
horror, but it is not fear ; unless I fear, I cannot 
be harmed ; my reason rejects this thing ; it is an 
illusion, I do not fear.” With a violent effort I 
succeeded at last in stretching out mj^ hand toward 
the weapon on the table ; as I did so, on the arm 
and shoulder I received a strange shock, and my 
arm fell to my side powerless. And now, to add 
to my horror, the light began slowly to wane from 
the candles; they were not, as it were, extinguished, 
but their flame seemed very gradually withdrawn ; 
it was the same with the fire, the light was ex¬ 
tracted from the fuel; in a few minutes the room 
was in utter darkness. The dread that came over 
me to be thus in the dark with that dark thing, 
whose power was so intensely felt, brought a re¬ 
action of nerve. In fact, terror had reached that 


92 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


climax, that either my senses must have deserted 
me, or I must have burst through the spell. I did 
burst through it. 1 found voice, though the 
voice was a shriek. I remember that I broke forth 
with words like these, “ I do not fear, my soul 
does not fear ; ” and at the same time 1 found 
strength to rise. Still in that profound gloom I 
rushed to one of the windows, tore aside the cur¬ 
tain, flung open the shutters ; my first thought 
was, light. And when I saw the moon, high, 
clear, and calm, I felt a joy that almost compen¬ 
sated for the previous terror. There was the 
moon, there was also the light from the gas-lamps 
in the deserted, slumberous street. I turned to 
look back into the room ; the moon penetrated its 
shadow very palely and partially, but still there 
was light. The dark thing, whatever it might be, 
was gone ; except that I could yet see a dim 
shadow, which seemed the shadow of that shade, 
against the opposite wall. 

My eye now rested on the table, and from under 
the table (which was without cloth or cover, an 
old mahogany round table) rose a hand, visible as 
far as the wrist. It was a hand, seemingly, as 
much of flesh and blood as my own, but the hand of 
an aged person, lean, wrinkled, small too, a 
woman’s hand. That hand very softly closed on 
the two letters that lay on the table ; hand and 
letters both vanished. Then came the same three 
loud, measured knocks I had heard at the bed-head 


ENGLISH STORIES 


93 


before this extraordinary drama had commenced. 

As these sounds slowly ceased, I felt the whole 
room vibrate sensibly ; and at the far end rose, as 
from the floor, sparks or globules like bubbles 
of light, many-colored, — green, yellow, fire-red, 
azure, — up and down, to and fro, hither, thither, 
as tiny will-o’-the-wisps the sparks moved, slow or 
swift, each at its own caprice. A chair (as in the 
drawing-room below) was now advanced from the 
wall without apparent agency, and placed at the 
opposite side of the table. Suddenly, as forth 
from the chair, grew a shape, a woman’s shape. It 
was distinct as a shape of life, ghastly as a shape 
of death. The face was that of youth, with a 
strange, mournful beauty ; the throat and shoul¬ 
ders were bare, the rest of the form in a loose robe 
of cloiuby white. It began sleeking its long yel¬ 
low hair, which fell over its shoulders ; its eyes 
were not turned toward me, but to the door ; 
it seemed listening, watching, waiting. The 
shadow of the shade in the background grew 
darker ; and again I thought I beheld the eyes 
gleaming out from the summit of the shadow, 
eyes fixed upon that shape. 

As if from the door, though it did not open, 
grew out another shape, equally distinct, equally 
ghastly, — a man's shape, a young man’s. It was 
in the dress of the last century, or rather in a 
likeness of such dress; for both the male shape 
and the female, though defined, were evidently 


94 


HA)V THORN JE CLASSICS 


unsubstantial, impalpable,—simulacra, phantasms; 
and there was something incongruous, grotesque, 
yet fearful, in the contrast between the elaborate 
finery, the courtly precision of that old-fashioned 
garb, with its raffles and lace and buckles, and the 
corpse-like aspect and ghost-like stillness of the 
flitting wearer. Just as the male shape approached 
the female, the dark shadow darted from the wall 
all three for a moment wrapped in darkness. When 
the pale light returned, the two phantoms were as 
if in the grasp of the shadow that towered between 
them, and there was a blood-stain on the breast of 
the female ; and the phantom male was leaning on 
its phantom sword, and blood seemed trickling fast 
from the ruffles, from the lace ; and the darkness of 
the intermediate shadow swallowed them up, they 
were gone. And again the bubbles of light shot, and 
sailed, and undulated, growing thicker and thicker 
and more wildly confused in their movements. 

The closet door to the right of the fireplace now 
opened, and from the aperture came the form of a 
woman, aged. In her hand she held letters, —the 
very letters over which I had seen the hand close; 
and behind her I heard a footstep. She turned 
round as if to listen, and then she opened the let¬ 
ters and seemed to read: and over her shoulder 
I saw a livid face, the face as of a man long 
drowned,—bloated, bleached, seaweed tangled in 
its dripping hair; and at her feet lay a form as 
of a corpse, and beside the corpse cowered a child, 


ENGLISH STORIES 


95 


a miserable, squalid child, with famine in its cheeks 
and fear in its eyes. And as I looked in the old 
woman’s face, the wrinkles and lines vanished, 
and it became a face of youth, — hard-eyed, stony, 
but still youth ; and the shadow darted forth and 
darkened over these phantoms, as it had darkened 
over the last. 

Nothing now was left but the shadow, and on 
that my eyes were intently fixed, till again eyes 
grew out of the shadow, — malignant, serpent eyes. 
And the bubbles of light again rose and fell, and in 
their disordered, irregular, turbulent maze mingled 
with the wan moonlight. And now from these 
globules themselves, as from the shell of an egg, 
monstrous things burst out; the air grew filled 
with them; larvae so bloodless and so hideous 
that I can in no way describe them, except to 
remind the reader of the swarming life which the 
solar microscope brings before his eyes in a drop 
of water, — things transparent, supple, agile, chas¬ 
ing each other, devouring each other, — forms like 
naught ever beheld by the naked eye. As the 
shapes were without symmetry, so their move¬ 
ments were without order. In their very va¬ 
grancies there was no sport; they came round me 
and round, thicker and faster and swifter, swarm¬ 
ing over my head, crawling over my right arm, 
which was outstretched in involuntary command 
against all evil beings. Sometimes I felt myself 
touched, but not by them ; invisible hands touched 


96 


HA )VTHORNE CLASSICS 


me. Once I felt the clutch as of cold, soft fingers 
at my throat. I was still equally conscious that 
if I gave way to fear I should be in bodily peril, 
and I concentered all my faculties in the single 
focus of resisting, stubborn will. And I turned 
my sight from the shadow, above all from those 
strange serpent eyes, — eyes that had now become 
distinctly visible. For there, though in naught 
else around me, l was aware that there was a will, 
and a will of intense, creative, working evil, which 
might crush down my own. 

The pale atmosphere in the room began now to 
redden as if in the air of some near conflagration. 
The larvae grew lurid as things that live in fire.- 
Again the room vibrated ; again were heard the 
three measured knocks ; and again all things were 
swallowed up in the darkness of the dark shadow, 
as if out of that darkness all had come, into that 
darkness all returned. 

As the gloom receded, the shadow was wholly 
gone. Slowly as it had been withdrawn, the flame 
grew again into the candles on the table, again 
into the fuel in the grate. The whole room came 
once more calmly, healthfully into sight. 

The two doors were still closed, the door com¬ 
municating with the servant’s room still locked. 
In the corner of the wall, into which he had con¬ 
vulsively niched himself, lay the dog. I called to 
him, — no movement ; I approached, — the animal 
was dead ; his eyes protruded, his tongue out of 


ENG LIS II S TO 111ES 


97 


his mouth, the froth gathered round his jaws. I 
took him in my arms ; I brought him to the lire ; 
I felt acute grief for the loss of my poor favorite, 
acute self-reproach ; i accused myself of his death ; 
I imagined lie had died of fright. But what was 
my surprise on finding that his neck was actually 
broken, — actually twisted out of the vertebrae. 
Had this been done in the dark? Must it not 
have been done by a hand human as mine? Must 
there not have been a human agency all the while 
in that room ? Good cause to suspect it. I can¬ 
not tell. I cannot do more than state the fact 
fairly ; the reader may draw his own inference. 

Another surprising circumstance, — my watch 
was restored to the table from which it had been 
so mysteriously withdrawn ; but it had stopped 
at the very moment it was so withdrawn ; nor, 
despite all the skill of the watchmaker, has it ever 
gone since : that is, it will go in a strange, erratic 
way for a few hours, and then comes to a dead 
stop ; it is worthless. 

Nothing more chanced for the rest of the night; 
nor, indeed, had I long to wait before the dawn 
broke. Not till it was broad daylight did 1 quit 
the haunted house. Before 1 did so, I revisited 
the little blind room in which my servant and I 
had been for a time imprisoned. I had a strong 
impression, for which I could not account, that 
from that room had originated the mechanism of 
the phenomena, if I may use the term, which had 


H 


98 


HA WTHORNE CLASSICS 


been experienced in my chamber ; and though I 
entered it now in the clear day, with the sun peer¬ 
ing through the filmy window, I still felt, as I 
stood on its floor, the creep of the horror which 
1 had first experienced there the night before, and 
which had been so aggravated by what had passed 
in my own chamber. I could not, indeed, bear to 
stay more than half a minute within those walls. 
I descended the stairs, and again I heard the foot¬ 
fall before me ; and when I opened the street door 
I thought I could distinguish a very low laugh. 
I gained my own home, expecting to find my run¬ 
away servant there. But he had not presented 
himself ; nor did I hear more of him for three 
days, when I received a letter from him, dated 
from Liverpool, to this effect : — 

“ Honored Sir, — I humbly entreat your par¬ 
don, though I can scarcely hope that you will 
think I deserve it, unless — which Heaven forbid ! 
— you saw what I did. I feel that it will be years 
before I can recover myself ; and as to being fit 
for service, it is out of the question. I am there¬ 
fore going to my brother-in-law at Melbourne. 
The ship sails to-morrow. Perhaps the long 
voyage may set me up. I do nothing now but 
start and tremble, and fancy it is behind me. I 
humbly beg you, honored sir, to order my clothes, 
and whatever wages are due to me, to be sent to 
my mother’s at Walworth: John knows her 
address.” 


ENGLISH STOlilES 


99 


The letter ended with additional apologies, 
somewhat incoherent, and explanatory details as 
to effects that had been under the writer’s charge. 

This flight may perhaps warrant a suspicion 
that the man wished to go to Australia, and had 
been somehow or other fraudulently mixed up 
with the events of the night. I say nothing in 
refutation of that conjecture ; rather, I suggest 
it as one that would seem to many persons the 
most probable solution of improbable occurrences. 
My own theory remained unshaken. I returned 
in the evening to the house, to bring away in a 
hack cab the things I had left there, with my poor 
dog’s body. In this task I was not disturbed, nor 
did any incident worth note befall me, except 
that still, on ascending and descending the stairs, 
1 heard the same footfall in advance. On leaving 

the house, I went to Mr. J-’s. He was at 

home. 1 returned him the keys, told him that 
my curiosity was sufficiently gratified, and was 
about to relate quickly what had passed, when he 
stopped me and said, though with much politeness, 
that he had no longer any interest in a mystery 
which none had ever solved. 

I determined at least to tell him of the two 
letters I had read, as well as of the extraordinary 
manner in which they had disappeared ; and I 
then inquired if he thought they had been ad¬ 
dressed to the woman who had died in the house, 
and if there were anything in her early history 
tore. 



100 


IIA WTHO RNE CL A SSICS 


which could possibly confirm the dark suspicions 

to which the letters gave rise. Mr. J-seemed 

startled, and, after musing a few moments, an¬ 
swered : “ I know but little of the woman’s earlier 
history, except, as 1 before told you, that her fam¬ 
ily were known to mine. But you revive some 
vague reminiscences to her prejudice. I will make 
inquiries, and inform you of their result. Still, 
even if we could admit the popular superstition 
that a person who had been either the perpetrator 
or the victim of dark crimes in life could revisit, 
as a restless spirit, the scene in which those crimes 
had been committed, I should observe that the 
house was infested by strange sights and sounds 
before the old woman died. You smile ; what 
would you say ? ” 

“I would say this : that I am convinced, if we 
could get to the bottom of these mysteries, we 
should find a living, human agency.” 

“ What ! you believe it is all an imposture ? 
For what object ? ” 

“Not an imposture, in the ordinary sense of 
the word. If suddenly I were to sink into a 
deep sleep, from which you could not awake me, 
but in that deep sleep could answer questions 
with an accuracy which I could not pretend to 
when awake, — tell you what money you had in 
your pocket, nay, describe your very thoughts,— 
it is not necessarily an imposture, any more than 
it is necessarily supernatural. I should be, un- 



ENGLISH STORIES 


101 


consciously to myself, under a mesmeric influence, 
conveyed to me from a distance by a human being 
who had acquired power over me by previous 
rapport .” 

“ Granting mesmerism, so far carried, to be a 
fact, you are right. And you would infer from 
this that a mesmerizer might produce the extraor¬ 
dinary effects you and others have witnessed over 
inanimate objects, — fill the air with sights and 
sounds ? ” 

“ Or impress our senses with the belief in them, 
we never having been en rapport with the person 
acting on us? No. What is commonly called 
mesmerism could not do this ; but there may be 
a power akin to mesmerism, and superior to it, — 
the power that in the old days was called Magic. 
That such a power may extend to all inanimate 
objects of matter, I do not say ; but if so, it 
would not be against nature, only a rare power in 
nature, which might be given to constitutions with 
certain peculiarities, and cultivated by practice 
to an extraordinary degree. That such a power 
might extend over the dead, — that is, over cer¬ 
tain thoughts and memories that the dead may 
still retain, — and compel, not that which ought 
properly to be called the soul, and which is far 
beyond human reach, but rather a phantom of 
what has been most earth-stained on earth, to 
make itself apparent to our senses, — is a very 
ancient though obsolete theory, upon which I will 


102 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


hazard no opinion. But I do not conceive the 
power would be supernatural. Let me illustrate 
what I mean, from an experiment which Paracel¬ 
sus 1 describes as not difficult, and which the 
author of the 4 Curiosities of Literature ’ 2 cites as 
credible : A flower perishes ; you burn it. What¬ 
ever were the elements of that flower while it 
lived are gone, dispersed, you know not whither ; 
you can never discover nor re-collect them. But 
you can, by chemistry, out of the burnt dust of 
that flower, raise a spectrum 3 of the flower, just 
as it seemed in life. It may be the same with a 
human being. The soul has as much escaped 
you as the essence or elements of the flower. 
Still you may make a spectrum of it. And this 
phantom, though in the popular superstition it is 
held to be the soul of the departed, must not be 
confounded with the true soul ; it is but the 
eidolon 4 of the dead form. Hence, like the best- 
attested stories of ghosts or spirits, the thing that 
most strikes us is the absence of what we hold to 
be soul, — that is, of superior, emancipated intelli¬ 
gence. They come for little or no object ; they 
seldom speak, if they do come ; they utter no 

1 1493-1541. One of the last of those who dealt in alchemy and 
the mystic mock-sciences of the middle ages. 

2 Isaac Disraeli (1766-1848). An English writer, father of 
Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. 

3 Not in the sense common in physics, hut meaning an appear¬ 
ance that remains in sight when the eyes are shut, 

4 The Greek word for appearance, 


ENGLISH S TO HIES 


103 


ideas above those of an ordinary person on earth. 
These American spirit-seers have published vol¬ 
umes of communications in prose and verse, which 
they assert to be given in the names of the most 
illustrious dead, — Shakespeare, Bacon, Heaven 
knows whom. Those communications, taking 
the best, are certainly of not a whit higher order 
than would be communications from living per¬ 
sons of fair talent and education ; they are won- 
drously inferior to what Bacon, Shakespeare, and 
Plato said and wrote when on earth. Nor, what 
is more notable, do they ever contain an idea 
that was not on the earth before. Wonderful, 
therefore, as such phenomena may be (granting 
them to be truthful), I see much that philosophy 
may question, nothing that it is incumbent on 
philosophy to deny, namely, nothing supernatural. 
They are but ideas conveyed somehow or other 
(we have not yet discovered the means) from one 
mortal brain to another. Whether in so doing 
tables walk of their own accord, or fiend-like 
shapes appear in a magic circle, or bodiless hands 
rise and remove material objects, or a thing of 
darkness, such as presented itself to me, freeze 
our blood, — still am I persuaded that these are 
but agencies conveyed, as by electric wires, to my 
own brain from the brain of another. In some 
constitutions there is a natural chemistry, and 
those may produce chemic wonders ; in others a 
natural fluid, call it electricity, and these produce 


104 


11A ] I TIIORNE CL A SSlCS 


electric wonders. But they differ in this from 
normal science : they are alike objectless, pur¬ 
poseless, puerile, frivolous. They lead on to no 
grand results, and therefore the world does not 
heed, and true sages have not cultivated them. 
But sure I am, that of all I saw or heard, a man, 
human as myself, was the remote originator; 
and, I believe, unconsciously to himself as to the 
exact effects produced, for this reason : no two 
persons, you say, have ever told you that they 
experienced exactly the same thing ; well, observe, 
no two persons ever experience exactly the same 
dream. If this were an ordinary imposture, the 
machinery would be arranged for results that 
would but little vary ; if it were a supernatural 
agency permitted by the Almighty, it would 
surely be for some definite end. These phenom¬ 
ena belong to neither class. My persuasion is, 
that they originate in some brain now far distant; 
that that brain had no distinct volition in any? 
thing that occurred ; that what does occur reflects 
but its devious, motley, ever shifting, half-formed 
thoughts ; in short, that it has been but the 
dreams of such a brain put into action and in¬ 
vested with a semi-substance. That this brain 
is of immense power, that it can set matter into 
movement, that it is malignant and destructive, 
1 believe. Some material force must have killed 
my dog ; it might, for aught I know, have suf¬ 
ficed to kill myself, had I been as subjugated by 


ENGLISH STORIES 


105 


terror as the dog, — had my intellect or my spirit 
given me no countervailing resistance in my will.” 

“ It killed your dog ! that is fearful! Indeed, 
it is strange that no animal can be induced to stay 
in that house ; not even a cat. Rats and mice 
are never found in it.” 

“The instincts of the brute creation detect in¬ 
fluences deadly to their existence. Man’s reason 
lias a sense less subtle, because it has a resisting 
power more supreme. But enough ; do you com¬ 
prehend my theory ? ” 

“ Yes, though imperfectly ; and I accept any 
crotchet (pardon the word), however odd, rather 
than embrace at once the notion of ghosts and 
hobgoblins we imbibed in our nurseries. Still, to 
my unfortunate house the evil is the same. What 
on earth can I do with the house ? ” 

“ I will tell you what I would do. I am con¬ 
vinced from my own internal feelings that the 
small unfurnished room, at right angles to the 
door of the bedroom which I occupied, forms a 
starting-point or receptacle for the influences 
which haunt the house ; and I strongly advise you 
to have the walls opened, the floor removed, nay, 
the whole room pulled down. I observe that it is 
detached from the body of the house, built over 
the small back yard, and could be removed with¬ 
out injury to the rest of the building.” 

“ And you think if I did that — ” 

“ You would cut off the telegraph-wires. Try 


106 


IIA WTHORNE CLASSICS 


it. I am so persuaded that I am right, that I will 
pay half the expense, if you will allow me to 
direct the operations.” 

“ Nay, I am well able to afford the cost; for 
the rest, allow me to write to you.” 

About ten days afterward I received a letter 

from Mr. J-, telling me that he had visited 

the house since I had seen him; that he had found 
the two letters I had described replaced in the 
drawer from which I had taken them; that he 
had read them with misgivings like my own ; that 
he had instituted a cautious inquiry about the 
woman to whom I rightly conjectured they had 
been written. It seemed that thirty-six years 
ago (a year before the date of the letters) she 
had married, against the wish of her relatives, 
an American of very suspicious character; in fact, 
he was generally believed to have been a pirate. 
She herself was the daughter of very respectable 
tradespeople, and had served in the capacity of 
nursery governess before her marriage. She had 
a brother, a widower, who was considered wealthy, 
and who had one child about six years old. A 
month after the marriage, the body of this brother 
was found in the Thames, near London Bridge ; 
there seemed some marks of violence about his 
throat, but they were not deemed sufficient to 
warrant the inquest in any other verdict than 
that of “found drowned.” 

The American and his wife took charge of the 



ENGLISH STORIES 


107 


little boy, the deceased brother having by his will 
left his sister the guardian of his only child, and 
in event of the child’s death the sister inherited. 
The child died about six months afterward ; it 
was supposed to have been neglected and ill- 
treated. The neighbors deposed to have heard 
it shriek at night. The surgeon who had ex¬ 
amined it after death said that it was emaciated 
as if from want of nourishment, and the body was 
covered with livid bruises. It seemed that one 
winter night the child had sought to escape; had 
crept out into the back yard, tried to scale the wall, 
fallen back exhausted, and had been found at 
morning on the stones in a dying state. But 
though there was some evidence of cruelty, there 
was none of murder; and the aunt and her hus¬ 
band had sought to palliate cruelty by alleging the 
exceeding stubbornness and perversity of the child, 
who was declared to be half-witted. Be that as it 
may, at the orphan’s death the aunt inherited her 
brother’s fortune. Before the first wedded year 
was out, the American quitted England abruptly, 
and never returned to it. He obtained a cruising 
vessel, which was lost in the Atlantic two years 
afterward. The widow was left in affluence; 
but reverses of various kinds had befallen her ; a 
bank broke, an investment failed, she went into 
a small business and became insolvent, then she 
entered into service, sinking lower and lower, 
from housekeeper down to maid-of-all-work, never 


108 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


long retaining a place, though nothing peculiar 
against her character was ever alleged. She was 
considered sober, honest, and peculiarly quiet in 
her ways; still nothing prospered with her. And 
so she had dropped into the workhouse, from 

which Mr. J- had taken her, to be placed in 

charge of the very house which she had rented 
as mistress in the first year of her wedded life. 

Mr. J-added that he had passed an hour 

alone in the unfurnished room which T had urged 
him to destroy, and that his impressions of dread 
while there were so great, though he had neither 
heard nor seen anything, that he was eager to 
have the walls bared and the floors removed, as 
I had suggested. He had engaged persons for 
the work, and would commence any day I would 
name. 

The day was accordingly fixed. I repaired to 
the haunted house ; we went into the blind, dreary 
room, took up the skirting, and then the floors. 
Under the rafters, covered with rubbish, was 
found a trapdoor, quite large enough to admit 
a man. It was closely nailed down with clamps 
and rivets of iron. On removing these we de¬ 
scended into a room below, the existence of which 
had never been suspected. In this room there 
had been a window and a flue, but they had been 
bricked over, evidently for many years. By the 
help of candles we examined this place ; it still 
retained some moldering furniture, — three chairs, 




ENGLISH STOlilES 


100 


an oak settee, a table, —- all of the fashion of about 
eighty years ago. There was a chest of drawers 
against the wall, in which we found, half rotted 
away, old-fashioned articles of a man’s dress, such 
as might have been worn eighty or a hundred 
years ago, by a gentleman of some rank ; costly 
steel buckles and buttons, like those yet worn in 
court-dresses, a handsome court-sword ; in a waist¬ 
coat which had once been rich with gold lace, but 
which was now blackened and foul with damp, we 
found five guineas^ a few silver coins, and an ivory 
ticket, probably for some place of entertainment 
long since passed away. But our main discovery 
was in a kind of iron safe fixed to the wall, the lock 
of which it cost us much trouble to get picked. 

In this safe were three shelves and two small 
drawers. Ranged on the shelves were several 
small bottles of crystal, hermetically stopped. 
They contained colorless volatile essences, of what 
nature I shall say no more than that they were 
not poisons ; phosphor and ammonia entered into 
some of them. There were also some very curi¬ 
ous glass tubes, and a small pointed rod of iron, 
with a large lump of rock-crystal, and another of 
amber, also a loadstone of great power. 

In one of the drawers we found a miniature 
portrait set in gold, and retaining the freshness 
of its colors most remarkably, considering the 
length of time it had probably been there. The 
portrait was that of a man who might be some- 


110 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


what advanced in middle life, perhaps forty-seven 
or forty-eight. 

It was a most peculiar face, a most impressive 
face. If you could fancy some mighty serpent 
transformed into man, preserving in the human 
lineaments the old serpent type, you would have 
a better idea of that countenance than long de¬ 
scriptions can convey ; the width and flatness of 
frontal, the tapering elegance of contour, disguis¬ 
ing the strength of the deadly jaw ; the long, 
large, terrible eye, glittering and green as the 
emerald, and withal a certain ruthless calm, as if 
from the consciousness of an immense power. 
The strange thing was this : the instant I saw 
the miniature I recognized a startling likeness 
to one of the rarest portraits in the world ; the 
portrait of a man of rank only below that of 
royalty, who in his own day had made a consid¬ 
erable noise. History says little or nothing of him ; 
but search the correspondence of his contempo¬ 
raries, and you find reference to his wild daring, 
his bold profligacy, his restless spirit, his taste for 
the occult sciences. While still in the meridian of 
life he died and was buried, so say the chronicles, 
in a foreign land. He died in time to escape the 
grasp of the law ; for he was accused of crimes 
which would have given him to the headsman. 
After his death, the portraits of him, which had 
been numerous, for he had been a munificent 
encourager of art, were bought up and destroyed, 


ENGLISH ST OH IE s 


111 


it was supposed by his heirs, who might have been 
glad could they have razed his very name from 
their splendid line. He had enjoyed vast wealth ; 
a large portion of this was believed to have been 
embezzled by a favorite astrologer or soothsayer ; 
at all events, it had unaccountably vanished at the 
time of his death. One portrait alone of him was 
supposed to have escaped the general destruction ; 
I had seen it in the house of a collector some 
months before. It had made on me a wonderful 
impression, as it does on all who behold it; a face 
never to be forgotten ; and there was that face in 
the miniature that lay within my hand. True, 
that in the miniature the man was a few years 
older than in the portrait I had seen, or than the 
original was even at the time of his death. But 
a few years ! — why, between the date in which 
flourished that direful noble, and the date in which 
the miniature was evidently painted, there was 
an interval of more than two centuries. While 
I was thus gazing, silent and wondering, Mr. 
J-said, — 

“But is it possible? I have known this man.” 

“ How ? where ? ” cried I. 

“In India. He was high in the confidence of 

the Rajah of-, and wellnigh drew him into a 

revolt which would have lost the Rajah his domin¬ 
ions. The man was a Frenchman, his name De 

V-; clever, bold, lawless. We insisted on his 

dismissal and banishment; it must be the same 





112 


IIA WTIIORNE CLASSICS 


man, no two faces like liis, yet this miniature 
seems nearly a hundred years old.” 

Mechanically 1 turned round the miniature to 
examine the back of it, and on the back was 
engraved a pentacle 1 ; in the middle of the pen- 
tacle a ladder, and the third step of the ladder 
was formed by the date 1765. Examining still 
more minutely, I detected a spring ; this, on being 
pressed, opened the back of the miniature as a lid. 
Within-side the lid were engraved, “ Mariana, to 

thee. Be faithful in life and. in death to-.” 

Here follows a name that I will not mention, but 
it was not unfamiliar to me. I had heard it 
spoken of by old men in my childhood as the 
name borne by a dazzling charlatan, who had made 
a great sensation in London for a year or so, and 
had fled the country on the charge of a double 
murder within his own house, — that of his mis¬ 
tress and his rival. I said nothing of this to 

Mr. J-, to whom reluctantly I resigned the 

miniature. 

We had found no difficulty in opening the first 
drawer within the iron safe ; we found great diffi¬ 
culty in opening the second : it was not locked, but 
it resisted all efforts, till we inserted in the chinks 
the edge of a chisel. When we had thus drawn it 
forth, we found a very singular apparatus, in the 
nicest order. 2 Upon a small, thin book, or rather 

1 A figure, supposed to be of magic power. 

2 Arranged with especial care. 



ENGLISH STORIES 


118 


tablet, was placed a saucer of crystal ; this saucer 
was filled with a clear liquid; on that liquid 
floated a kind of compass, with a needle shifting 
rapidly round ; but instead of the usual points of 
a compass, were seven strange characters, not very 
unlike those used by astrologers to denote the 
planets. A very peculiar, but not strong nor dis¬ 
pleasing odor came from this drawer, which was 
lined with a wood that we afterward discovered to 
be hazel. Whatever the cause of this odor, it 
produced a material effect on the nerves. We all 
felt it, even the two workmen who were in the 
room ; a creeping, tingling sensation, from the 
tips of the fingers to the roots of the hair. Impa¬ 
tient to examine the tablet, I removed the saucer. 
As I did so, the needle of the compass went round 
and round with exceeding swiftness, and I felt a 
a shock that ran through my whole frame, so that 
I dropped the saucer on the floor. The liquid 
was spilt, the saucer was broken, the compass rolled 
to the end of the room, and at that instant the walls 
shook to and fro as if a giant had swayed and 
rocked them. 

The two workmen were so frightened that they 
ran up the ladder by which we had descended from 
the trapdoor ; but, seeing that nothing more hap¬ 
pened, they were easily induced to return. 

Meanwhile, I had opened the tablet; it was 
bound in plain red leather, with a silver clasp; 
it contained but one sheet of thick vellum, and on 

i 


114 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


that sheet were inscribed, within a double pen- 
tacle, words in old monkish Latin, which are liter¬ 
ally to be translated thus : “ On all that it can 
reach within these walls, sentient or inanimate, 
living or dead, as moves the needle, so works my 
will ! Accursed be the house, and restless the 
dwellers therein.” 

We found no more. Mr. J- burned the 

tablet and its anathema. He razed to the founda¬ 
tion the part of the building containing the secret 
room, with the chamber over it. He had then the 
courage to inhabit the house himself for a month, 
and a quieter, better conditioned house could not 
be found in all London. Subsequently he let it 
to advantage, and his tenant has made no com¬ 
plaints. 

But my story is not yet done. A few days after 

Mr. J-had removed into the house, I paid him 

a visit. We were standing by the open window and 
conversing. A van containing some articles of fur¬ 
niture which he was moving from his former house 
was at the door. I had just urged on him ifiy 
theory, that all those phenomena regarded as 
supermundane had emanated from a human brain ; 
adducing the charm, or rather curse, we had found 
and destroyed, in support of my theory. Mr 

J-was observing in reply, “ that even if mes.- 

merism, or whatever analogous power it might be 
called, could really thus work in the absence of 
the operator, and produce effects so extraordinary, 





ENGLISH STORIES 


115 


still could those effects continue when the opera¬ 
tor himself was dead ? and if the spell had been 
wrought, and, indeed, the room walled up, more 
than seventy years ago, the probability was, that 
the operator had long since departed this life,” — 

Mr. J--, I say, was thus answering, when I 

caught hold of his arm and pointed to the street 
below. 

A well-dressed man had crossed from the oppo¬ 
site side, and was accosting the carrier in charge 
of the van. His face, as he stood, was exactly 
fronting our window. It was the face of the 
miniature we had discovered ; it was the face of 
the portrait of the noble three centuries ago. 

“Good heaven ! ” cried Mr. J-, “that is the 

face of De V-, and scarcely a day older than 

when I saw it in the Rajah’s court in my youth ! ” 

Seized by the same thought, we both hastened 
downstairs ; I was first in the street, but the man 
had already gone. I caught sight of him, how¬ 
ever, not many yards in advance, and in another 
moment I was by his side. 

I had resolved to speak to him ; but when 1 
looked into his face, I felt as if it were impossible 
to do so. That eye—the eye of the serpent — 
fixed and held me spellbound. And withal, about 
the man’s whole person there was a dignity, an air 
of pride and station and superiority, that would 
have made any one, habituated to the usages of 
the world, hesitate long before venturing upon 





116 


HA WTHORNE CLASSICS 


a liberty or impertinence. And what could I say ? 
What was it I could ask ? Thus ashamed of my 
first impulse, I fell a few paces back, still, how¬ 
ever, following the stranger, undecided what else 
to do. Meanwhile, he turned the corner of the 
street ; a plain carriage was in waiting with a ser¬ 
vant out of livery, dressed like a valet de place, 1 
at the carriage door. In another moment he had 
stepped into the carriage, and it drove off. I re¬ 
turned to the house. Mr. J-was still at the 

street door. He had asked the carrier what the 
stranger had said to him. 

“ Merely asked whom that house now belonged 
to.” 

The same evening I happened to go with a 
friend to a place in town called the Cosmopolitan 
Club, a place open to men of all countries, all 
opinions, all degrees. One orders one’s coffee, 
smokes one’s cigar. One is always sure to meet 
agreeable, sometimes remarkable persons. 

I had not been two minutes in the room before 
I beheld at table, conversing with an acquaintance 
of mine, whom I will designate by the initial 

G-, the man, the original of the miniature. 

I Le was now without his hat, and the likeness Avas 
yet more startling, only I observed that while he 
Avas conversing, there Avas less severity in the 
countenance ; there A\ T as even a smile, though a 
very quiet and very cold one. The dignity of 

1 Somebody to guide one about a town. 




ENGLISH STOHIES 


117 


mien I had acknowledged in the street was also 
more striking ; a dignity akin to that which in¬ 
vests some prince of the East, conveying the idea 
of supreme indifference and habitual, indisputable, 
indolent, but resistless power. 

G- soon after left the stranger, who then 

took up a scientific journal, which seemed to 
absorb his attention. 

I drew G-aside. “ Who and what is that 

gentleman ? ” 

“ That ? Oh, a very remarkable man indeed ! 
I met him last year amidst the caves of Petra, the 
Scriptural Edom. He is the best Oriental scholar 
I know. We joined company, had an adventure 
with robbers, in which he showed a coolness that 
saved our lives; afterward he invited me to spend a 
day with him in a house he had bought at Damascus, 
a house buried amongst almond-blossoms and roses ; 
the most beautiful thing ! He had lived there for 
some years, quite as an Oriental, in grand style. 
I half suspect he is a renegade, immensely rich, 
very odd ; by the bye, a great mesmerizer. I 
have seen him with my own eyes produce an 
effect on inanimate things. If you take a letter 
from your pocket and throw it to the other end of 
the room, he will order it to come to his feet, and 
you will see the letter wriggle itself along the floor 
till it has obeyed his command. Ton my honor 
’tis true ; I have seen him affect even the weather : 
disperse or collect clouds, by means of a glass tube 




118 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


or wand. But he does not like talking of these 
matters to strangers. He has only just arrived in 
England ; says he has not been here for a great 
many years ; let me introduce him to you.” 

“ Certainly ! He is English, then? What is his 
name ? ” 

u Oh ! a very homely one, — Richards.” 

“ And what is his birth, — his family ? ” 

“ How do 1 know ? What does it signify ? No 
doubt some parvenu ; but rich, so infernally rich ! ” 

G-drew me up to the stranger, and the 

introduction was effected. The manners of Mr. 
Richards were not those of an adventurous traveler. 
Travelers are in general gifted with high animal 
spirits; they are talkative, eager, imperious. 
Mr. Richards was calm and subdued in tone, with 
manners which were made distant by the loftiness 
of punctilious courtesy, the manners of a former 
age. I observed that the English he spoke was 
not exactly of our day. I should even have said 
that the accent was slightly foreign. But then 
Mr. Richards remarked that he had been little in 
the habit for many years of speaking in his native 
tongue. The conversation fell upon the changes 
in the aspect of London since he had last visited 

our metropolis. G-then glanced off to the 

moral changes, — literary, social, political, — the 
great men who were removed from the stage within 
the last twenty years ; the new great men who 
were coming on. In all this Mr. Richards evinced 




ENGLISH STORIES 


119 


no interest. He had evidently read none of our 
living authors, and seemed scarcely acquainted by 
name with our younger statesman. Once, and 

only once, he laughed ; it was when G-asked 

him whether he had any thoughts of getting into 
Parliament. And the laugh was inward, sarcastic, 
sinister; a sneer raised into a laugh. After a few 
minutes, G-left us to talk to some other ac¬ 

quaintances who had just lounged into the room, 
and I then said, quietly, — 

“ I have seen a miniature of you, Mr. Richards, 
in the house you once inhabited, and perhaps built, 
— if not wholly, at least in part,—in Oxford Street. 
You passed by that house this morning.” 

Not till I had finished did I raise my eyes to 
his, and then his fixed my gaze so steadfastly that 
I could not withdraw it, — those fascinating serpent- 
eyes. But involuntarily, and as if the words that 
translated my thought were dragged from me, I 
added in a low whisper, 44 1 have been a student in 
the mysteries of life and nature; of those 
mysteries T have known the occult professors. 1 
have the right to speak to you thus.” And I 
uttered a certain password. 

44 Well, I concede the right. What would you 
ask ? ” 

44 To what extent human will in certain tempera¬ 
ments can extend ? ” 

44 To what extent can thought extend? Think, 
and before you draw breath you are in China ! ” 




120 


IIA WTIIORNE CLASSICS 


“True; but my thought has no power in 
China ! ” 

“Give it expression, and it may have. You 
may write down a thought which, sooner or later, 
may alter the whole condition of China. What is 
a law but a thought ? Therefore thought is 
infinite. Therefore thought has power ; not in 
proportion to its value, — a bad thought may 
make a bad law as potent as a good thought can 
make a good one.” 

“Yes ; what you say confirms my own theory. 
Through invisible currents one human brain may 
transmit its ideas to other human brains, with 
the same rapidity as a thought promulgated by 
visible means. And as thought is imperishable, as 
it leaves its stamp behind it in the natural world, 
even when the thinker has passed out of this 
world, so the thought of the living may have 
power to rouse up and revive the thoughts of the 
dead, such as those thoughts were in life , though 
the thought of the living cannot reach the thoughts 
which the dead now may entertain. Is it not so? ” 

“ I decline to answer, if in my judgment thought 
has the limit you would fix to it. But proceed ; 
you have a special question you wish to put.” 

“ Intense malignity in an intense will, engendered 
in a peculiar temperament, and aided by natural 
means within the reach of science, may produce 
effects like those ascribed of old to evil magic. It 
might thus haunt the walls of a human habitation 


ENGLISH STORIES 


121 


with spectral revivals of all guilty thoughts and 
guilty deeds once conceived and done within those 
walls ; all, in short, with which the evil will claims 
rapport 1 and affinity,— imperfect, incoherent, frag¬ 
mentary snatches at the old dramas acted therein 
years ago. Thoughts thus crossing each other hap¬ 
hazard, as in the nightmare of a vision, growing 
up into phantom sights and sounds, and all serv¬ 
ing to create horror ; not because those sights and 
sounds are really visitations from a world without, 
but that they are ghastly, monstrous renewals of 
what have been in this world itself, set into malig¬ 
nant play by a malignant mortal. And it is 
through the material agency of that human brain 
that these things would acquire even a human 
power ; would strike as with the shock of elec¬ 
tricity, and might kill, if the thought of the 
person assailed did not rise superior to the dignity 
of the original assailer ; might kill the most power¬ 
ful animal, if unnerved by fear, but not injure the 
feeblest man, if, while his flesh crept, his mind 
stood out fearless. Thus when in old stories we 
read of a magician rent to pieces by the fiends he 
had invoked, or still more, in Eastern legends, that 
one magician succeeds by arts in destroying an¬ 
other, there may be so far truth, that a material 
being has clothed, from his own evil propensities, 
certain elements and fluids, usually quiescent or 
harmless, with awful shapes and terrific force ; 


Connection. 


122 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


just as the lightning, that had lain hidden and 
innocent in the cloud, becomes by natural law 
suddenly visible, takes a distinct shape to the eye, 
and can strike destruction on the object to which 
it is attracted.” 

“You are not without glimpses of a mighty 
secret,” said Mr. Richards, composedly. “ Accord¬ 
ing to your view, could a mortal obtain the power 
you speak of, lie would necessarily be a malignant 
and evil being.” 

“If the power were exercised, as I have said, 
most malignant and most evil ; though I believe 
in the ancient traditions, that he could not injure 
the good. His will could only injure those with 
whom it has established an affinity, or over whom 
it forces unresisted sway. I will now imagine an 
example that may be within the laws of nature, 
yet seem wild as the fables of a bewildered monk. 

“You will remember that Albertus Magnus, 1 
after describing minutely the process by which 
spirits may be invoked and commanded, adds 
emphatically, that the process will instruct and 
avail only to the few; that a man must be born a 
magician! that is, born with a peculiar physical 
temperament, as a man is born a poet. Rarely are 
men in whose constitution lurks this occult power 
of the highest order of intellect; usually in the 
intellect there is some twist, perversity, or disease. 
But, on the other hand, they must possess, to an 

1 1193-1280. A mediaeval scholar of immense range of learning. 


/ 


ENGLISH STORIES 123 

astonishing degree, the faculty to concentrate 
thought on a single object,—the energic faculty 
that we call will. Therefore, though their intel¬ 
lect be not sound, it is exceedingly forcible for 
the attainment of what it desires. I will imagine 
such a person pre-eminently gifted with this con¬ 
stitution and its concomitant forces. I will place 
him in the loftier grades of society. I will sup¬ 
pose his desires emphatically those of the sensual¬ 
ist ; he has, therefore, a strong love of life. He is 
an absolute egotist; his will is concentered in him¬ 
self ; he has fierce passions ; he knows no endur¬ 
ing, no holy affections, but he can covet eagerly 
what for the moment he desires ; he can hate 
implacably what opposes itself to his objects ; he 
can commit fearful crimes, yet feel small remorse ; 
he resorts rather to curses upon others, than to 
penitence for his misdeeds. Circumstances, to 
which his constitution guides him, lead him to a 
rare knowledge of the natural secrets which may 
serve his egotism. He is a close observer where 
his passions encourage observation ; he is a minute 
calculator, not from love of truth, but where love 
of self sharpens his faculties ; therefore he can be 
a man of science. I suppose such a being, having 
by experience learned the power of his arts over 
others, trying what may be the power of will over 
his own frame, and studying all that in natural 
philosophy may increase that power. He loves 
life, he dreads death ; he wills to live on. He can- 


124 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


not restore himself to youth, he cannot entirely 
stay the progress of death, he cannot make himself 
immortal in the flesh and blood ; but he may arrest, 
for a time so long as to appear incredible if I said 
it, that hardening of the parts which constitutes 
old age. A year may age him no more than an 
hour ages another. His intense will, scientifically 
trained into system, operates, in short, over the 
wear and tear of his own frame. He lives on. 
That he may not seem a portent and a miracle, he 
dies, from time to time, seemingly, to certain per¬ 
sons. Having schemed the transfer of a wealth 
that suffices to his wants, he disappears from one 
corner of the world, and contrives that his obse¬ 
quies shall be celebrated. He reappears at another 
corner of the world, where he resides undetected, 
and does not visit the scenes of his former career 
till all who could remember his features are no 
more. He would be profoundly miserable if he 
had affections ; he has none but for himself. No 
good man would accept his longevity ; and to no 
man, good or bad, would he or could he communi¬ 
cate its true secret. Such a man might exist ; 
such a man as I have described 1 see now before 

me, — Duke of-, in the court of-, dividing 

time between lust and brawl, alchemists and 
wizards ; again, in the last century, charlatan and 
criminal, with name less noble, domiciled in the 
house at which you gazed to-day, and flying from 
the law you had outraged, none knew whither ; 




ENGL 1SI1 S TO 11IES 


125 


traveler once more revisiting London, with the 
same earthly passions which filled your heart when 
races now no more walked through yonder streets ; 
outlaw from the school of all the nobler and 
diviner mysteries. Execrable image of life in 
death and death in life, I warn you back from 
the cities and homes of healthful men ! back to 
the ruins of departed empires ! back to the deserts- 
of nature unredeemed ! ” 

There answered me a whisper so musical, so 
potently musical, that it seemed to enter into my 
whole being, and subdue me despite myself. Thus 
it said : — 

“ 1 have sought one like you for the last hun¬ 
dred years. Now I have found you, we part not 
till 1 know what I desire. The vision that sees 
through the past and cleaves through the veil of 
the future is in you at this hour, — never before, 
never to come again. The vision of no puling, 
fantastic girl, of no sick-bed somnambule, but of 
a strong man with a vigorous brain. Soar, and 
look forth ! ” 

As he spoke, I felt as if I rose out of myself 
upon eagle wings. All the weight seemed gone 
from air, roofless the room, roofless the dome of 
space. I was not in the body, — where, I knew 
not ; but aloft over time, over earth. 

Again I heard the melodious whisper : “You 
say right. I have mastered great secrets by the 
power of will. True, by will and by science 1 can 


126 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


retard tlie process of years ; hut death comes not 
by age alone. Can I frustrate the accidents 
which bring death upon the young ? ” 

“No, every accident is a providence. Before a 
providence, snaps every human will.” 

“ Shall I die at last, ages and ages hence, by the 
slow, though inevitable, growth of time, or by the 
cause that I call accident ? ” 

“ By a cause you call accident.” 

“ Is not the end still remote ? ” asked the 
whisper, with a slight tremor. 

“ Regarded as my life regards time, it is still 
remote.” 

“ And shall I, before then, mix with the world 
of men as I did ere I learned these secrets ; 
resume eager interest in their strife and their 
trouble ; battle with ambition, and use the power 
of the sage to win the power that belongs to 
kings ? ” 

“ You will yet play a part on the earth that will 
fill earth with commotion and amaze. For wondrous 
designs have you, a wonder yourself, been per¬ 
mitted to live on through the centuries. All the 
secrets you have stored will then have their uses; 
all that now makes you a stranger amidst the gen¬ 
erations will contribute then to make you their 
lord. As the trees and the straws are drawn into 
a whirlpool, as they spin round, are sucked to the 
deep, and again tossed aloft by the eddies, so shall 
races and thrones be drawn into your vortex. 


ENGLISH STORIES 


127 


Awful destroyer ! but in destroying, made, against 
your own will, a constructor.” 

“ And that date, too, is far off ? ” 

u Far off; when it comes, think your end in 
this world is at hand ! ” 

“ I low and what is the end? Look east, west, 
south, and north.” 

44 In the north, where you never yet trod, toward 
the point whence your instincts have warned you, 
there a specter will seize you. Tis Death! I see 
a ship! it is haunted; ’tis chased! it sails on. 
Baffled navies sail after that ship. It enters the 
region of ice. It passes a sky red with meteors. 
Two moons stand on high, over ice reefs. I see 
the ship locked between white defiles; they are 
ice rocks. I see the dead strew the decks, stark 
and livid, green mold on their limbs. All are 
dead but one man, — it is you ! But years, though 
so slowly they come, have then scathed you. There 
is the coming of age on your brow, and the will is 
relaxed in the cells of the brain. Still that will, 
though enfeebled, exceeds all that man knew be¬ 
fore you ; through the will you live on, gnawed 
with famine. And nature no longer obeys you in 
that death-spreading region ; the sky is a sky of 
iron, and the air has iron clamps, and the ice rocks 
wedge in the ship. Hark how it cracks and groans! 
Ice will embed it as amber embeds a straw. And 
a man has gone forth, living yet, from the ship and 
its dead; and he has clambered up the spikes of 


128 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


an iceberg, and the two moons gaze down on his 
form. That man is yourself, and terror is on you, 
— terror ; and terror has swallowed up your will. 
And I see, swarming up the steep ice rock, gray, 
grizzly things. The bears of the North have 
scented their quarry; they come near you and 
nearer, shambling, and rolling their bulk. And 
in that day every moment shall seem to you longer 
than the centuries through which you have passed. 
And heed this: after life, moments continued 
make the bliss or the hell of eternity.” 

“Hush,” said the whisper. “But the day, you 
assure me, is far off, very far ! 1 go back to the 

almond and rose of Damascus ! Sleep ! ” 

The room swam before my eyes. I became in¬ 
sensible. When I recovered, I found G-hold¬ 

ing my hand and smiling. He said, “ You, 
who have always declared yourself proof against 
mesmerism, have succumbed at last to my friend 
Richards.” 

“ Where is Mr. Richards ? ” 

“ Gone, when you passed into a trance, saying 
quietly to me, 4 Your friend will not wake for an 
hour.’ ” 

I asked where Mr. Richards lodged. 

“At the Trafalgar Hotel.” 

“ Give me your arm,” said I to G-. “ Let 

us call on him ; I have something to say.” 

When we arrived at the hotel, we were told 
that Mr. Richards had returned twenty minutes 




ENGLISH STORIES 


129 


before, paid his bill, left directions with his ser¬ 
vant (a Greek) to pack his effects, and proceed to 
Malta by the steamer from Southampton, Mr. 
Richards had merety said of his own movements, 
that he had visits to pay in the neighborhood of 
London, and it was uncertain whether he should 
be able to reach Southampton in time for that 
steamer; if not, he should follow in the next one. 

The waiter asked me my name. On my inform¬ 
ing him, he gave me a note that Mr. Richards had 
left for me, in case I called. 

The note was as follows : — 

“ I wished you to utter what was in your mind. 
You obeyed. I have therefore established power 
over you. For three months from this day you 
can communicate to no living man what lias passed 
between us. You cannot even show this note to 
the friend by your side. During three months, 
silence complete as to me and mine. Do you 
doubt my power to lay on you this command ? try 
to disobey me. At the end of the third month 
the spell is raised. For the rest, I spare you. I 
shall visit your grave a year and a day after it has 
received you.” 

So ends this strange story, which I ask no one 
to believe. I write it down exactly three months 
after I received the above note. I could not write 

it before, nor could I show to G-, in spite of his 

urgent request, the note which I read under the 
gas-lamp by his side. 



A DOG OF FLANDERS 


BY OUIDA 

Nello and Patrasche were left all alone in the 
world. 

They were friends in a friendship closer than 
brotherhood. Nello was a little Ardennois; Pa¬ 
trasche was a big Fleming . 1 They were both of 
the same age by length of years ; yet one was still 
young, and the other was already old. They had 
dwelt together almost all their days ; both were 
orphaned and destitute, and owed their lives to 
the same hand. It had been the beginning of the 
tie between them, — their first bond of sympathy, 
— and it had strengthened day by day, and had 
grown with their growth, firm and indissoluble, 
until they loved one another very greatly. 

Their home was a little hut on the edge of a 
little village — a Flemish village a league from 

1 One must know a little geography, or these names will be 
meaningless. But a few minutes with a map of Belgium will he 
enough. Flanders is the old name for the country on the North 
Sea south of the Scheldt, including part of what is now Belgium, 
and part of northern France. The inhabitants were called 
Flemings, and the things pertaining to it Flemish. An Ardennois 
means one of Ardennes, a district in southeastern Belgium. Ant¬ 
werp, in East Flanders, is the great commercial city of Belgium. 

130 


ENGLISH STORIES 


131 


Antwerp, set amid flat breadths of pasture and 
corn lands, with long lines of poplars and of alders 
bending in the breeze on the edge of the great 
canal which ran through it. It had about a score 
of houses and homesteads, with shutters of bright 
green or sky-blue, and roofs rose-red or black and 
white, and walls whitewashed until they shone in 
the sun like snow. In the center of the village 
stood a windmill, placed on a little moss-grown 
slope ; it was a landmark to all the level country 
round. It had once been painted scarlet, sails and 
all; but that had been in its infancy, half a cen¬ 
tury or more earlier, when it had ground wheat 
for the soldiers of Napoleon ; and it was now a 
ruddy brown, tanned by wind and weather. It 
went queerly by fits and starts, as though rheu¬ 
matic and stiff in the joints from age; but it 
served the whole neighborhood, which would 
have thought it almost as impious to carry grain 
elsewhere as to attend any other religious service 
than the mass that was performed at the altar of 
the little old gray church, with its conical steeple, 
which stood opposite to it, and whose single bell 
rang morning, noon, and night with that strange, 
subdued, hollow sadness which every bell that 
hangs in the Low Countries 1 seems to gain as an 
integral part of its melody. 

Within sound of the little melancholy clock, 

1 A name given in olden times to Holland and Belgium, which 
do lie very low, in some places below the level of the sea. 


132 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


almost from their birth upward, they had dwelt 
together, Nello and Patrasche, in the little hut on 
the edge of the village, with the cathedral spire of 
Antwerp rising in the northeast, beyond the great 
green plain of seeding grass and spreading corn 
that stretched away from them like a tideless, 
changeless sea. It was the hut of a very old man, 
of a very poor man — of old Jehan Daas, who in 
his time had been a soldier, and who remembered 
the wars that had trampled the country as oxen 
tread down the furrows, and who had brought 
from his service nothing except a wound which 
had made him a cripple. 

When old Jehan Daas had reached his full 
eighty, his daughter had died in the Ardennes, 
hard by Stavelot , 1 and had left him in legacy her 
two-year-old son. The old man could ill contrive 
to support himself, but he took up the additional 
burden uncomplainingly, and it soon became wel¬ 
come and precious to him. Little Nello, which 
was but a pet diminutive for Nicolas, throve with 
him, and the old man and the little child lived in 
the poor little hut contentedly. 

It was a very humble little mud hut indeed, but 
it was clean and white as a sea shell and stood in 
a small plot of garden ground that yielded beans 
and herbs and pumpkins. They were very poor, 
terribly poor ; many a day they had nothing at all 

1 In the northern part of the Ardennes, some little way from 
Antwerp. 


ENGLISH STORIES 


133 


to eat. They never by any chance had enough ; 
to have had enough to eat would have been to 
have reached paradise at once. But the old man 
was very gentle and good to the boy, and the boy 
was a beautiful, innocent, truthful, tender-natured 
creature ; and they were happy on a crust and a 
few leaves of cabbage, and asked no more of earth 
or Heaven — save, indeed, that Patrasche should 
be always with them, since without Patrasche 
where would they have been ? 

For Patrasche was their alpha and omega 1 ; their 
treasury and granary ; their store of gold and wand 
of wealth ; their bread-winner and minister 2 ; their 
only friend and comforter. Patrasche dead or 
gone from them, they must have laid themselves 
down and died likewise. Patrasche was body, 
brains, hands, head, and feet to both of them ; 
Patrasche was their very life, their very soul. For 
Jehan Daas was old and a cripple, and Nello was 
but a child ; and Patrasche was their dog. 

A dog of Flanders.— yellow of hide, large of 
head and limb, with wolf-like ears that stood erect, 
and legs bowed and feet widened in the muscular 
development wrought in his breed by many gener¬ 
ations of hard service. Patrasche came of a race 
which had toiled hard and cruelly from sire to son 
in Flanders many a century — slaves of slaves, dogs 

1 The first and last letters of the Greek alphabet (see Reve¬ 
lation i. 1, 8): often used now as equivalent to “ everything.” 

2 Servant. 


134 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


of the people, beasts of the shafts and the harness, 
creatures that lived straining their sinews in the 
gall of the cart, and died breaking their hearts on 
the flints of the streets. 

Patrasche had been born of parents who had 
labored hard all their days over the sharp-set 
stones of the various cities, and the long, shadow¬ 
less, weary roads of the two Flanders and of 
Brabant . 1 He had been born to no other heritage 
than those of pain and of toil. He had been fed 
on curses and baptized with blows. Why not ? It 
was a Christian country, and Patrasche was but a 
dog. Before he was fully grown he had known 
the bitter gall of the cart and the collar. Before 
he had entered his thirteenth month he had be¬ 
come the property of a hardware dealer, who was 
accustomed to wander over the land north and 
south, from the blue sea to the green mountains. 
They sold him for a small price because he was 
so young. 

This man was a drunkard and a brute. The life 
of Patrasche was a life of hell. To deal the tor¬ 
tures of hell on the animal creation is a way which 
the Christians have of showing their belief in it. 
His purchaser was a sullen, ill-living, brutal Bra- 
bantois, who heaped his cart full with pots and 
pans and flagons and buckets, and other wares of 
crockery and brass and tin, and left Patrasche to 
draw the load as best he might, while he himself 


1 To the west of Flanders. 


ENGLISH STORIES 


135 


lounged idly by the side in fat and sluggish ease, 
smoking his black pipe and stopping at every 
wine shop or cafe on the road. 

Happily for Patrasche, or unhappily, he was 
very strong ; he came of an iron race, long born 
and bred to such cruel travail ; so that he did not 
die, but managed to drag on a wretched existence 
under the brutal burdens, the scarifying lashes, the 
hunger, the thirst, the blows, the curses, and the 
exhaustion, which are the only wages with which 
the Flemings repay the most patient and laborious 
of all their four-footed victims. One day, after 
two years of this long and deadly agony, Patrasche 
was going on as usual along one of the straight, 
dusty, unlovely roads that lead to the city of 
Rubens . 1 It was full midsummer, and very warm. 
His cart was very heavy, piled high with goods in 
met.al and in earthenware. His owner sauntered 
on without noticing him otherwise than by the 
crack of the whip as it curled round his quivering 
loins. The Brabantois had paused to drink beer 
himself at every wayside house, but he had for¬ 
bidden Patrasche to stop a moment for a draught 
from the canal . 2 Going along thus in the full sun, 
on a scorching highway, having eaten nothing for 
twenty-four hours, and, which was far worse to 
him, not having tasted water for nearly twelve, 

1 Rubens, the most famous of Flemish artists, lived the greater 
part of his life in Antwerp. 

2 The low part of Belgium, like Holland, has many canals. 


136 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


being blind with dust, sore with blows, and stupe 
tied with the merciless weight which dragged upon 
his loins, Patrasche, for once, staggered and foamed 
a little at the mouth, and fell. 

He fell in the middle of the white, dusty road, 
in the full glare of the sun ; he was sick unto death, 
and motionless. His master gave him the only 
medicine in his pharmacy, — kicks and oaths, and 
blows with a cudgel of oak, which had been often 
the only food and drink, the only wage and re¬ 
ward, ever offered to him. But Patrasche was 
beyond the reach of any torture or of any curses. 
Patrasche lay, dead to all appearances, down in 
the white powder of the summer dust. After a 
while, finding it useless to assail his ribs with pun¬ 
ishment and his ears with maledictions, the Bra- 
bantois — deeming life gone in him, or going, so 
nearly that his carcass was forever useless, unless, 
indeed, some one should strip it of the skin for 
gloves —cursed him fiercety in farewell, struck off 
the leathern bands of the harness, kicked his body 
heavily aside into the grass, and, groaning and 
muttering in savage wrath, pushed the cart lazily 
along the road uphill, and left the dying dog there 
for the ants to sting and for the crows to pick. 

It was the last day before kermess , 1 away at 
Louvain , 2 and the Brabantois was in haste to 

1 The annual fair or festivity of a town. 

2 Louvain is a large town in Brabant and used to be its 
capital. 


ENGLISH STOEIES 


137 


reach the fair and get a good place for his truck 
of brass wares. lie was in fierce wrath, because 
Patrasche had been a strong and much-enduring 
animal, and because he himself had now the hard 
task of pushing his charette 1 all the way to Lou¬ 
vain. But to stay to look after Patrasche never 
entered his thoughts ; the beast was dying and 
useless, and he would steal, to replace him, the 
first large dog that he found wandering alone 
out of sight of its master. Patrasche had cost 
him nothing, or next to nothing, and for two long, 
cruel years he had made him toil ceaselessly in his 
service, from sunrise to sunset, through summer 
and winter, in fair weather and foul. 

He had got a fair use and a good profit out of 
Patrasche ; being human, he was wise, and left 
the dog to draw his last breath alone in the 
ditch, and have his bloodshot eyes plucked out 
as they might be by the birds, while he himself 
went on his way to beg and to steal, to eat and 
to drink, to dance and to sing in the mirth at 
Louvain. A dying dog, a dog of the cart — 
why should he waste hours over its agonies at 
peril of losing a handful of copper coins, at peril 
of a shout of laughter ? 

Patrasche lay there, flung in the grass-green 
ditch. It was a busy road that day, and hun¬ 
dreds of people, on foot and on mules, in wagons 
or in carts, went by, tramping quickly and joyously 


1 A sort of cart. 


138 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


on to Louvain. Some saw him ; most did not 
even look ; all passed on. A dead dog more or 
less — it was nothing in Brabant; it would be 
nothing anywhere in the world. 

After a time, among the holiday-makers, there 
came a little old man who was bent and lame and 
very feeble. He was in no guise for feasting ; he 
was very poorly and miserably clad, and he dragged 
his silent way slowly through the dust among the 
pleasure-seekers. He looked at Patrasche, paused, 
wondered, turned aside, then kneeled down in the 
rank gra£s and weeds of the ditch, and surveyed 
the dog with kindly eyes of pity. There was 
with him a little rosy, fair-haired, dark-eyed child 
of a few years old, who pattered in amid the bushes, 
that were for him breast-high, and stood gazing 
with a pretty seriousness upon the poor great, 
quiet beast. 

Thus it was that these two first met — the little 
Nello and the big Patrasche. 

The upshot of that day was that old Jehan 
Daas, with much laborious effort, drew the suf¬ 
ferer homeward to his own little hut, which was a 
stone’s throw off, amid the fields; and there tended 
him with so much care that the sickness, which had 
been a brain-seizure brought on by heat and thirst 
and exhaustion, with time and shade and rest 
passed away, and health and strength returned, 
and Patrasche staggered up again upon his four 
stout, tawny legs. 


ENGLISH S TO HIES 


139 


Now for many weeks lie liad been useless, power¬ 
less, sore, near to death ; but all this time he had 
heard no rough word, had felt no harsh touch, but 
only the pitying murmurs of the little child’s voice 
and the soothing caress of the old man’s hand. 

In his sickness they two had grown to care for 
him, this lonely old man and the little happy child. 
He had a corner of the hut, with a heap of dry 
grass for his bed ; and they had learned to listen 
eagerly for his breathing in the dark night to tell 
them that he lived ; and when he first was well 
enough to essay a loud, hollow, broken bay, they 
laughed aloud, and almost wept together for joy 
at such a sign of his sure restoration ; and little 
Nello, in delighted glee, hung round his rugged 
neck chains of marguerites , 1 and kissed him with 
fresh and ruddy lips. 

So then, when Patrasche arose, himself again, 
strong, big, gaunt, powerful, his great wistful eyes 
had a gentle astonishment' in them that there were 

O 

no curses to rouse him and no blows to drive him ; 
and his heart awakened to a mighty love, which 
never wavered once in its fidelity while life abode 
with him. 

But Patrasche, being a dog, was grateful. Pa¬ 
trasche lay pondering long, with grave, tender, 
musing brown eyes watching the movements of 
his friends. 

Now the old soldier, Jehan Daas, could do 


1 Daisies. 


140 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


nothing for his living but limp about a little with 
a small cart, with which he carried daily the milk 
cans of those happier neighbors who owned cattle 
away into the town of Antwerp. The villagers 
gave him the employment a little out of charity ; 
more because it suited them well to send their 
milk into the town by so honest a carrier, and 
bide at home themselves to look after their 
gardens, their cows, their poultry, or their little 
fields. But it was becoming hard work for the 
old man. He was eighty-three, and Antwerp was 
a good league 1 off, or more. 

Patrasche watched the milk cans come and go 
that one day when he had got well and Avas lying 
in the sun with the wreath of marguerites round 
his tawny neck. 

The next morning Patrasche, before the old 
man had touched the cart, arose and walked to 
it, and placed himself betwixt its handles, and 
testified as plainly as dumb show could do his 
desire and his ability to work in return for the 
bread of charity that he had eaten. Jehan Daas 
resisted long, for the old man was one of those 
who thought it a foul shame to bind dogs to 
labor for which Nature never formed them. 
But Patrasche would not be gainsaid; finding 
they did not harness him, he tried to draw the 
cart onward with his teeth. 

At length Jehan Daas gave way, vanquished 

1 A league is about three miles. 


ENGLISH STORIES 


141 


by the persistence and the gratitude of this crea¬ 
ture whom he had succored. He fashioned his 
cart so that Patrasche could run in it, and this he 
did every morning of his life thenceforward. 

When the winter came Jelian Daas thanked 
the blessed fortune that had brought him to the 
dying dog in the ditch that fair day of Louvain ; 
for he was very old, and he grew feebler with 
each year, and he would ill have known how to 
pull his load of milk cans over the snows and 
through the deep ruts in the mud if it had not 
been for the strength and the industry of the 
animal he had befriended. As for Patrasche, it 
seemed heaven to him. After the frightful bur¬ 
dens that his old master had compelled him to 
strain under, at the call of the whip at every 
step, it seemed nothing to him but amusement to 
step out with this little light, green cart, with its 
bright brass cans, by the side of the gentle old 
man, who always paid him with a tender caress 
and with a kindly word. Besides, his work was 
over by three or four in the day, and after that 
time he was free to do as he would — to stretch 
himself, to sleep in the sun, to wander in the fields, 
to romp with the young child, or to play with his 
fellow-dogs. Patrasche was very happy. 

Fortunately for his peace, his former owner 
was killed in a drunken brawl at the kermess 
of Mechlin , 1 and so sought not after him 

1 Between Antwerp and Louvain. 


142 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


nor disturbed him in his new and well-loved 
home. 

A few years later old Jelian Daas, who had 
always been a cripple, became so paralyzed with 
rheumatism that it was impossible for him to go 
out with the cart any more. Then little Nello, 
being now grown to his sixth year of age, and 
knowing the town well from having accompanied 
his grandfather so many times, took his place be¬ 
side the cart, and sold the milk and received the 
coins in exchange, and brought them back to their 
respective owners with a pretty grace and serious¬ 
ness which charmed all who beheld him. 

The little Ardennois was a beautiful child, with 
dark, grave, tender eyes, and a lovely bloom upon 
his face, and fair locks that clustered to his throat ; 
and many an artist sketched the group as it went 
by him — the green cart with the brass flagons of 
Teniers and Mieris and Van Tal , 1 and the great, 
tawny-colored, massive dog, with his belled har¬ 
ness that chimed cheerily as he went, and the small 
figure that ran beside him, which had little white 
feet in great wooden shoes, and a soft, grave, inno¬ 
cent, happy face, like the little fair children of 
Rubens. 

Nello and Patrasclie did the work so well and 
s0 joyfully together that Jelian Daas himself, when 

1 These are Flemish and Dutch painters, whose favorite sub¬ 
jects were scenes of popular life. They worked two or three 
hundred years ago, but Ouida mentions them to show that these 
brass cans were old traditional things. 


ENGLISH STORIES 


143 


the summer came and lie was better again, had no 
need to stir out, but could sit in the doorway in 
the sun and see them go forth through the garden 
wicket, and then doze and dream and pray a little, 
and then awake again as the clock tolled three 
and watch for their return. And on their return 
Patrasche would shake himself free of his harness 
with a bay of glee, and Nello would recount with 
pride the doings of the day ; and they would all 
go in together to their meal of rye bread and milk 
or soup, and would see the shadows lengthen over 
the great plain, and see the twilight veil the fair 
cathedral spire ; and then lie down together to 
sleep peacefully, while the old man said a prayer. 

So the days and the years went on, and the lives 
of Nello and Patrasche were happy, innocent, and 
healthful. 

In the spring and summer especially were they 
glad. Flanders is not a lovely land, and around 
the burg of Rubens it is perhaps least lovely of 
all. Corn and colza, pasture and plow, succeed 
each other on the characterless plain in wearying 
repetition, and, save by some gaunt gray tower, 
with its peal of pathetic bells, or some figure com¬ 
ing athwart the fields, made picturesque by a 
gleaner’s bundle or a woodman s fagot, there is 
no change, no variety, no beauty anywhere ; and 
he who has dwelt upon the mountains or amid 
the forests feels oppressed as by imprisonment 
with the tedium and the endlessness of that vast 


144 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


and dreary level. But it is green and very fertile, 
and it has wide horizons that have a certain charm 
of their own even in their dullness and monotony ; 
and among the rushes by the water side the flowers 
grow, and the trees rise tall and fresh where the 
barges glide, with their great hulks black against 
the sun, and their little green barrels and vari¬ 
colored flags gay against the leaves. Anyway, 
there is greenery and breadth of space enough to 
be as good as beauty to a child and a dog; and 
these two asked no better, when their work was 
done, than to lie buried in the lush grasses on the 
side of the canal, and watch the cumbrous vessels 
drifting by and bringing the crisp salt smell of the 
sea among the blossoming scents of the country 
summer. 

True, in the winter it was harder, and they had 
to rise in the darkness and the bitter cold, and they 
had seldom as much as they could have eaten any 
day; and the hut was scarce better than a shed 
when the nights were cold, although it looked so 
pretty in warm weather, buried in a great kindly 
clambering vine, that never bore fruit, indeed, but 
which covered it with luxuriant green tracery all 
through the months of blossom and harvest. In 
winter the winds found many holes in the walls of 
the poor little hut, and the vine was black and 
leafless, and the bare lands looked very bleak and 
drear without, and sometimes within the floor was 
flooded and then frozen. In winter it was hard; 


ENGLISH STORIES 


145 


and the snow numbed the little white limbs of 
Nello, and the ieicles eut the brave, untiring feet 
of Patrasche. 

But even then they were never heard to lament, 
either of them. The child’s wooden shoes and the 
dog’s four legs would trot manfully together over 
the frozen fields to the chime of the bells on the 
harness ; and then sometimes, in the streets of 
Antwerp, some housewife would bring them a 
bowl of soup and a handful of bread, or some 
kindly trader would throw some billets of fuel 
into the little cart as it went homeward, or some 
woman in their own village would bid them keep 
some share of the milk they carried for their own 
food ; and then they would run over the white 
lands, through the early darkness, bright and 
happy, and burst with a shout of joy into their 
home. 

So, on the whole, it was well with them — very 
well ; and Patrasche, meeting on the highway or 
in the public streets the many dogs who toiled 
from daybreak into nightfall, paid only with blows 
and curses, and loosened from the shafts with a 
kick to starve and freeze as best they might — Pa¬ 
trasche in his heart was very grateful to his fate, 
and thought it the fairest and the kindliest the 
world could hold. Though he was often very 
hungry indeed when he lay down at night; though 
he had to work in the heats of summer noons and 
the rasping chills of winter dawns ; though his 

L 


146 


IIA 11 THORNE CL A SSICS 


feet were often tender with wounds from the sharp 
edges of the jagged pavement; though he had to 
perform tasks beyond his strength and against his 
nature — yet he was grateful and content ; he did 
his duty with each day, and the eyes that he 
loved smiled down on him. It was sufficient for 
Patrasche. 

There was only one thing which caused Pa¬ 
trasche any uneasiness in his life, and it was this. 
Antwerp, as all the world knows, is full at every 
turn of old piles 1 of stones, dark and ancient and 
majestic, standing in crooked courts, jammed 
against gateways and taverns, rising by the water’s 
edge, with bells ringing above them in the air, and 
ever and again out of their arched doors a swell 
of music pealing. There they remain, the grand 
old sanctuaries of the past, shut in amid the 
squalor, the hurry, the crowds, the unloveliness, 
and the commerce of the modern world ; and all 
day long the clouds drift and the birds circle and 
the winds sigh around them, and beneath the earth 
at their feet there sleeps — Rubens. 

And the greatness of the mighty master still 
rests upon Antwerp, and wherever we turn in its 
narrow streets his glory lies therein, so that all 
mean things are thereby transfigured; and as we 
pace slowly through the winding ways, and by the 
edge of the stagnant water, and through the noi¬ 
some courts, his spirit abides with us, and the 

1 Buildings, in this case great churches. 


147 


ENGLISH STOlilES 

heroic beauty of his visions is about us, and the 
stones that once felt his footsteps and bore his 
shadow seem to arise and speak of him with liv¬ 
ing voices. For the city which is the tomb of 
Rubens still lives to us through him, and him 
alone. 

It is so quiet there by that great white sepulcher 
— so quiet, save only when the organ peals and 
the choir cries aloud the Salve Regina or the 
Ivyrie eleison . 1 Sure no artist ever had a greater 
gravestone than that pure marble sanctuary gives 
to him in the heart of his birthplace in the chancel 
of St. Jacques . 2 

Without Rubens, what were Antwerp ? A dirty, 
dusky, bustling mart, which no man would ever 
care to look upon save the traders who do busi¬ 
ness on its wharves. With Rubens, to the whole 
world of men it is a sacred name, a sacred soil, 
a Bethlehem where a god of art saw light, a Gol¬ 
gotha where a god of art lies dead. 

O nations ! closely should you treasure your 
great men ; for by them alone will the future know 
of you. Flanders in her generations has been 
wise. In his life she glorified this greatest of her 
sons, and in his death she magnifies his name. 
But her wisdom is very rare. 

Now the trouble of Patrasche was this. Into 
these great, sad piles of stones, that reared their 


1 Parts of the Church service. 

2 The Cathedral of Antwerp. 


148 


IIA WTHORNE CLASSICS 


melancholy majesty above the crowded roofs, the 
child Nello would many and many a time enter, 
and disappear through their dark, arched portals, 
while Patrasche, left without upon the pavement, 
would wearily and vainly ponder on what could be 
the charm which thus allured from him his in¬ 
separable and beloved companion. Once or twice 
he did essay to see for himself, clattering up the 
steps with his milk cart behind him ; but thereon 
he had been always sent back again summarily by 
a tall custodian in black clothes and silver chains 
of office ; and, fearful of bringing his little master 
into trouble, he desisted, and remained couched 
patiently before the churches until such time as 
the boy reappeared. It was not the fact of his 
going into them which disturbed Patrasche ; he 
knew that people went to church ; all the village 
went to the small, tumble-down, gray pile opposite 
the red windmill. What troubled him was that 
little Nello always looked strangely when he came 
out, always very flushed or very pale; and'when- 
ever he returned home after such visitations would 
sit silent and dreaming, not caring to play, but 
gazing out at the evening skies beyond the line of 
the canal, very subdued and almost sad. 

What was it ? wondered Patrasche. He thought 
it could not be good or natural for the little lad to 
be so grave, and in his dumb fashion he tried all 
he could to keep Nello by him in the sunny fields 
or in the busy market place. But to the churches 


ENGL IS IT S TO RIES 


149 


Nello would go; most often of all would lie go to 
the great cathedral; and Patrasche, left without 
on the stones by the iron fragments of Quentin 
Matsys’s 1 gate, would stretch himself and yawn 
and sigh, an d^ even howl nowand then, all in vain, 
until the doors closed and the child perforce came 
forth again, and, winding his arms about the dog’s 
neck, would kiss him on his broad, tawny-colored 
forehead, and murmur always the same words, “If 
1 could only see them, Patrasche ! — if I could 
only see them ! ” 

What were they ? pondered Patrasche, looking 
up with large, wistful, sympathetic eyes. 

One day, when the custodian was out of the way 
and the doors left ajar, he got in for a moment 
after his little friend and saw. “ They ” were two 
great, covered pictures on either side of the choir. 

Nello was kneeling, rapt as in an ecstasy, before 
the altar-picture of the Assumption 2 ; and when 
he noticed Patrasche, and rose and drew the dog 
gently out into the air, his face was wet with tears, 
and he looked up at the veiled places as he passed 
them, and murmured to his companion, “ It is so 
terrible not to see them, Patrasche, just because 
one is poor and cannot pay ! He never meant 
that the poor should not see them when he painted 
them, I am sure. He would have had us see them 

1 An early Flemish artist. 

2 The Cathedral of Antwerp has three great pictures by Rubens. 
The Assumption is over the altar: the two others are mentioned on 
the next page. 


150 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


any day, every day ; that I am sure. And they 
keep them shrouded there — shrouded in the dark, 
the beautiful things ! And they never feel the 
light, and no eyes look on them, unless rich people 
come and pay. If I could only see them, I 
would be content to die.” 

But he could not see them, and Patrasche could 
not help him, for to gain the silver piece that the 
church exacts as the price for looking on the glories 
of the “ Elevation of the Cross ” and the “ Descent 
of the Cross ” was a thing as utterly beyond the 
powers of either of them as it would have been to 
scale the heights of the cathedral spire. They 
had never so much as a sou to spare ; if they 
cleared enough to get a little wood for the stove, 
a little broth for the pot, it was the utmost they 
could do. And yet the heart of the child was set 
in sore and endless longing upon beholding the 
greatness of the two veiled Rubens . 1 

The whole soul of the little Ardennois thrilled 
and stirred with an absorbing passion for art. 
Going on his ways through the old city in the early 
days before the sun or the people had risen, Nello, 
who looked only a little peasant boy, with a great 
dog drawing milk to sell from door to door, was 
in a heaven of dreams whereof Rubens was the 
god. Nello, cold and hungry, with stockingless 
feet in wooden shoes, and the winter winds blow- 

1 The two great pictures mentioned are covered by screens and 
displayed on payment of a small fee. 


ENGLISH S TOLIES 


151 


ing among his curls and lifting liis poor tlnn gar¬ 
ments, was in a rapture of meditation, wherein 
all that he saw was the beautiful fair face of the 
Mary of the Assumption, with the waves of her 
golden hair lying upon her shoulders, and the light 
of an eternal sun shining down upon her brow. 
Nello, reared in poverty, and buffeted by fortune, 
and untaught in letters, and unheeded by men, 
had the compensation or the curse which is called 
genius. 

No one knew it ; he as little as any. No one 
knew it. Only, indeed, Patrasche, who, being with 
him always, saw him draw with chalk upon the 
stones any and every thing that grew or breathed ; 
heard him on his little bed of hay murmur all 
manner of timid, pathetic prayers to the spirit of 
the great master; watched his gaze darken and 
his face radiate at the evening glow of sunset or 
the rosy rising of the dawn ; and felt many and 
many a time the tears of a strange, nameless pain 
and joy, mingled together, fall hotty from the 
bright young eyes upon his own wrinkled, yellow 
forehead. 

“ I should go to my grave quite content if I 
thought, Nello, that when thou growest a man 
thou couldst own this hut and the little plot of 
ground, and labor for thyself, and be called Baas 
by thy neighbors,” said the old man Jehan many 
an hour from his bed. For to own a bit of soil, 
and to be called Baas (master) by the hamlet 


152 


HA WTHORNE CLASSICS 


round, is to have achieved the highest ideal of a 
Flemish peasant ; and the old soldier, who had 
wandered over all the earth in his youth, and had 
brought nothing back, deemed in his old age that 
to live and die on one spot in contented humility 
was the fairest fate he could desire for his darling. 
But Nello said nothing. 

The same leaven was working in him that in 
other times begat Rubens and Jordsens and the 
Van Eycks , 1 and all their wondrous tribe, and in 
times more recent began in the green country of 
the Ardennes, where the Meuse washes the old 
walls of Dijon, the great artist of the Patroclus, 
whose genius is too near us for us aright to measure 
its divinity . 2 

Nello dreamed of other things in the future 
than of tilling the little rood of earth and living 
under the wattle roof, and being called Baas by 
neighbors a little poorer or a little less poor than 
himself. The cathedral spire, where it rose beyond 
the fields in the ruddy evening skies, or in the 
dim, gray, misty mornings, said other things to him 
than this. But these he told only to Patrasclie, 
whispering, childlike, his fancies in the dog’s ear 
when they went together at their work through 
the fogs of the daybreak, or lay together at their 

1 The Van Eycks were among the early Flemish painters. Jor- 
drnns was of about the same time as Rubens. 

2 Antoine Joseph Wiertz, a Belgian historical painter. His 
works are collected in a celebrated gallery in Brussels. One of 
them is the “ Struggle on the Death of Patroclus.” 


ENGLISH STOBIES 


153 


rest among the rustling rushes by the water’s 
side. 

For such dreams are not easily shaped into 
speech to awake the slow sympathies of human 
auditors ; and they would only have sorely per¬ 
plexed and troubled the poor old man bedridden 
in his corner, who, for his part, whenever he had 
trodden the streets of. Antwerp, had thought the 
daub of blue and red that they called a Madonna, 
on the walls of the wine shop where he drank his 
sou’s worth of black beer, quite as good as any of 
the famous altarpieces for which the stranger folk 
traveled far and wide into Flanders from every 
land on which the good sun shone. 

There was only one other besides Patrasche to 
whom Nello could talk at all of his daring fantasies. 
T1 lis other was little Alois, who lived at the old 
red mill on the grassy mound, and whose father, 
the miller, was the best-to-do husbandman in all 
the village. Little Alois was only a pretty baby 
with soft, round, rosy features, made lovely by 
those sweet dark eyes that the Spanish rule has 
left in so many a Flemish face in testimony of the 
Alvan dominion, as Spanish art has left broad- 
sown throughout the country majestic palaces and 
stately courts, gilded house fronts and sculptured 
lintels — histories in blazonry and poems in stone. 

Little Alois was often with Nello and Patrasche. 
They played in the fields, they ran in the snow, 
they gathered the daisies and bilberries, they went 


154 


IIA WTIIOBNE CLASSICS 


up to the old gray church together, and they often 
sat together by the broad wood fire in the mill- 
house. Little Alois, indeed, was the richest child 
in the hamlet. She had neither brother nor sister ; 
her blue serge dress had never a hole in it ; at 
kermess she had as many gilded nuts and Agni 
Dei in sugar as her hands could hold ; and when 
she went up for her first communion her flaxen 
curls were covered with a cap of richest Mechlin 
lace, which had been her mother’s and her grand¬ 
mother’s before it came to her. Men spoke already, 
though she had but twelve years, of the good wife 
she would be for their sons to woo and win ; but 
she herself was a little gay, simple child, in no 
wise conscious of her heritage, and she loved no 
playfellows so well as Jehan Daas’s grandson and 
his dog. 

One day her father, Baas Cogez, a good man, 
but somewhat stern, came on a pretty group in the 
long meadow behind the mill, where the aftermath 
had that day been cut. It was his little daughter 
sitting amid the liay, with the great, tawny head 
of Patrasche on her lap, and many wreaths of 
poppies and blue cornflowers round them both ; 
on a clean, smooth slab of pine wood the boy Nello 
drew their likeness with a stick of charcoal. 

The miller stood and looked at the portrait with 
tears in his eyes — it was so strangely like, and he 
loved his only child closely and well. Then he 
roughly chid the little girl for idling there while 


EXGLISH S TO HIES 


155 


her mother needed her within, and sent her indoors 
crying and afraid ; then, turning, he snatched the 
wood from Nello’s hands. “ Dost do much of such 
folly ? ” he asked, but there was a tremble in his 
voice. 

Nello colored and hung his head. “ I draw 
everything I see,” he murmured. 

The miller was silent ; then he stretched his 
hand out with a franc in it. “ It is folly, as I say, 
and evil waste of time ; nevertheless it is like 
Alois, and will please the house-mother. Take 
this silver bit for it and leave it for me.” 

The color died out of the face of the young 
Ardennois ; he lifted his head and put his hands 
behind his back. “ Keep your money and the 
portrait both, Baas Cogez,” he said simply. “ You 
have been often good to me.” Then he called 
Patrasche to him, and walked away across the 
fields. 

“ I could have seen them with that franc,” he 
murmured to Patrasche ; “ but I could not sell 
her picture — not even for them.” 

Baas Cogez went into his mill house sore 
troubled in his mind. “ That lad must not be so 
much with Alois,” he said to his wife that night. 
u Trouble may come of it hereafter ; he is fifteen 
now, and she is twelve, and the boy is comely of 
face and form.” 

“ And he is a good lad and a loyal,” said the 
housewife, feasting her eyes on the piece of pine 


156 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


wood where it was throned above the chimney 
with a cuckoo clock in oak and a Calvary in 
wax . 1 

“Yea, I do not gainsay that,” said the miller, 
draining his pewter flagon. 

“ Then, if what you think of were ever to come 
to pass,” said the wife, hesitatingly, “would it 
matter so much ? She will have enough for both, 
and one cannot be better than happy.” 

“ You are a woman, and therefore a fool,” said 
the miller, harshly, striking his pipe on the table. 
“ The lad is naught but a beggar, and, with these 
painter’s fancies, worse than a beggar. Have a 
care that they are not together in the future, or I 
will send the child to the surer keeping of the 
nuns of the Sacred Heart.” 

The poor mother was terrified, and promised 
humbly to do his will. Not that she could bring 
herself altogether to separate the child from her 
favorite playmate, nor did the miller even desire 
that extreme of cruelty to a young lad who was 
guilty of nothing except poverty. But there were 
many ways in which little Alois was kept away 
from her chosen companion ; and Nello, being a 
boy proud and quiet and sensitive, was quickly 
wounded, and ceased to turn his own steps and 
those of Patrasche, as he had been used to do with 
every moment of leisure, to the old red mill upon 

1 These represent the ideas on art of their possessors. A Calvary 
is a certain kind of representation of the scene of the Crucifixion. 


ENGLISH STORIES 


157 


the slope. What his offense was he did not know ; 
he supposed he had in some manner angered Baas 
Cogez by taking the portrait of Alois in the 
meadow ; and when the child who loved him 
would run to him and nestle her hand in his, he 
would smile at her very sadly, and say, with a 
tender concern for her before himself, “Nay, Alois, 
do not anger your father. He thinks that I make 
you idle, dear, and he is not pleased that you 
should be with me. He is a good man and loves 
you well ; we will not anger him, Alois.” 

But it was with a sad heart that he said it, and 
the earth did not look so bright to him as it had 
used to do when he went out at sunrise under the 
poplars down the straight roads with Patrasche. 
The old red mill had been a landmark to him, and 
he had been used to pause by it, going and com¬ 
ing, for a cheery greeting with its people, as her 
little flaxen head rose above the low mill wicket, 
and her little rosy hands had held out a bone or a 
crust to Patrasche. Now the dog looked wistfully 
at a closed door, and the boy went on without 
pausing, with a pang at his heart, and the child sat 
within with tears dropping slowly on the knitting 
to which she was set on her little stool by the 
stove ; and Baas Cogez, working among his sacks 
and his mill-gear, would harden his will and say to 
himself, “ It is best so. The lad is all but a beg¬ 
gar, and full of idle, dreaming fooleries. Who 
knows what mischief might not come of it in the 


158 


HA W THORNE CLASSICS 


future ? ” So he was wise in his generation, and 
would not have the door unbarred, except upon 
rare and formal occasions, which seemed to have 
neither warmth nor mirth in them to the two chil¬ 
dren, who had been accustomed so long to a daily- 
gleeful, careless, happy interchange of greeting, 
speech, and pastime, with no other watcher of 
their sports or auditor of their fancies than Pa- 
trasche, sagely shaking the brazen bells of his col¬ 
lar and responding with all a dog’s swift sympathies 
to their every change of mood. 

All this while the little panel of pine wood re¬ 
mained over the chimney in the mill kitchen with 
the cuckoo clock and the waxen Calvary ; and 
sometimes it seemed to Nello a little hard that, 
while his gift was accepted, he himself should be 
denied. 

But he did not complain ; it was his habit to be 
quiet. Old Jehan Daas had said ever to him, 
“ We are poor ; we must take what God sends — 
the ill with the good ; the poor cannot choose.” 

To which the boy had always listened in silence, 
being reverent of his old grandfather ; but never¬ 
theless a certain vague, sweet hope, such as be¬ 
guiles the children of genius, had whispered in his 
heart, “Yet the poor do choose sometimes — 
choose to be great, so that men cannot say them 
nay.” And he thought so still in his innocence ; 
and one day, when the little Alois, finding him by 
chance alone among the cornfields by the canal, 


ENGLISH STORIES 


159 


ran to liim and held him close, and sobbed pite¬ 
ously because the morrow Avould be her saint’s 
day , 1 and for the first time in all her life her par¬ 
ents had failed to bid him to the little supper and 
romp in the great barns with which her feast day 
was always celebrated, Nello had kissed her, and 
murmured to her in firm faith, “ It shall be differ¬ 
ent one day, Alois. One day that little bit of 
pine wood that your father has of mine shall be 
worth its weight in silver ; and he will not shut 
the door against me then. Only love me always, 
dear little Alois ; only love me always, and I will 
be great.” 

“ And if I do not love you ? ” the pretty child 
asked, pouting a little through her tears, and 
moved by the instinctive coquetries of her sex. 

Nello’s eyes left her face and wandered to the 
distance, where, in the red and gold of the Flem¬ 
ish night, the cathedral spire rose. There was a 
smile on his face so sweet and yet so sad that little 
Alois was awed by it. “I will be great still,” he 
said under his breath — “ great still, or die, 
Alois.” 

“You do not love me,” said the little spoiled 
child, pushing him away ; but the boy shook his 
head and smiled, and went on his way through the 
tall yellow corn, seeing as in a vision some day in 
a fair future when he should come into that old 
familiar land, and ask Alois of her people, and be 
i The day of the saint after whom she was named. 


160 


HA WTHORNE CL A SSICS 


not refused or denied, but received in honor ; 
while the village folk should throng to look upon 
him, and say in one another’s ears, “ Dost see 
him ? He is a king among men ; for he is a great 
artist, and the world speaks his name ; and yet he 
was only our poor little Nello, who was a beggar, 
as one may say, and only got his bread by the 
help of his dog.” And he thought how he 
would fold his grandsire in furs and purples, and 
portray him as the old man is portrayed in the 
Family 1 in the chapel of St. Jacques; and of 
how he would hang the throat of Patrasche with a 
collar of gold, and place him on his right hand, 
and say to the people, “ This was once my only 
friend ; ” and of how he Avould build himself a 
great white marble palace, and make to himself 
luxuriant gardens of pleasure, on the slope looking 
outward to where the cathedral spire rose ; and 
not dwell in it himself, but summon to it, as to a 
home, all men young and poor and friendless, but 
of the will to do mighty things ; and of how he 
would say to them always, if they sought to bless 
his name, “ Nay ; do not thank me — thank 
Rubens. Without him, what should I have 
been ? ” And these dreams — beautiful, impos¬ 
sible, innocent, free of all selfishness, full of 
heroical worship — were so closely about him as 
he went that he was happy — happy even on this 
sad anniversary of Alois’s saint’s day, when he and 
1 A picture of the Holy Family. 


ENGLISH STORIES 


161 


Patrasche went home by themselves to the little 
dark hut and the meal of black bread, while in the 
mill house all the children of the village sang and 
laughed, and ate the big round cakes of Dijon and 
the almond gingerbread of Brabant, and danced in 
the great barn to the light of the stars and the 
music of flute and fiddle. 

“ Never mind, Patrasche,” he said, with his arms 
round the dog’s neck, as they both sat in the door 
of the hut, where the sounds of the mirth at the 
mill came down to them on the night air ; “ never 
mind. It shall all be changed by and by.” 

He believed in the future ; Patrasche, of more 
experience and of more philosophy, thought that 
the loss of the mill supper in the present was ill 
compensated by dreams of milk and honey in some 
vague hereafter. And Patrasche growled when¬ 
ever he passed by Baas Cogez. 

“ This is Alois’s name-day, is it not?” said the 
old man Daas that night, from the corner where 
he was stretched upon his bed of sacking. 

The boy gave a gesture of assent ; he wished 
that the old man’s memory had erred a little, 
instead of keeping such sure account. 

“ And why art not there ? ” his grandfather pur¬ 
sued. “Thou hast never missed a year before, 
Nello.” 

“Thou art too sick to leave,” murmured the 
lad, bending his handsome young head over the bed. 

“Tut ! tut ! Mother Nulette would have come 


M 


162 


IIA 1 VTHORNE CLASSICS 


and sat with me, as she does scores of times. 
What is the cause, Nello ?” the old man persisted. 
“ Thou surely hast not had ill words with the little 
one ? ” 

“Nay,grandfather, never,” said the boy, quickly, 
with a hot color in his bent face. u Simply and 
truly, Baas Cogez did not have me asked this year. 
He has taken some whim against me.” 

“ But thou hast done nothing wrong ? ” 

“That I know of — nothing. I took the por¬ 
trait of Alois on a piece of pine ; that is all.” 

“ Ah ! ” The old man was silent; the truth 
suggested itself to him with the boy’s innocent 
answer. He was tied to a bed of dried leaves in 
the corner of a wattle hut, but he had not wholly 
forgotten what the ways of the world were like. 

He drew Nello’s fair head fondly to his breast 
with a tender gesture. “ Thou art very poor, my 
child,” he said, with a quiver the more in his aged, 
trembling voice ; “ so poor ! It is very hard for 
thee.” 

“ Nay ; lam rich,” murmured Nello ; and in his 
innocence he thought so ; rich with the imperish¬ 
able powers that are mightier than the might of 
kings. And he went and stood by the door of 
the hut in the quiet autumn night, and watched 
the stars troop by and the tall poplars bend and 
shiver in the wind. All the casements of the mill 
house were lighted, and every now and then the 
notes of the flute came to him. The tears fell 


ENGLISH STORIES 


163 


down his cheeks, for he was but a child ; yet lie 
smiled, for he said to himself, “ In the future ? ” 
He stayed there until all was quite still and dark ; 
then he and Patrasche went within and slept 
together, long and deeply, side by side. 

Now he had a secret which only Patrasche knew. 
There was a little outhouse to the hut which no 
one entered but himself — a dreary place, but with 
abundant clear light from the north. Here he had 
fashioned himself rudely an easel in rough lumber, 
and here, on a great gray sea of stretched paper, he 
had given shape to one of the innumerable fancies 
which possessed his brain. No one had ever taught 
him anything; colors he had no means to buy; 
he had gone without bread many a time to pro¬ 
cure even the few rude vehicles that he had here ; 
and it was only in black or white that he could 
fashion the things he saw. This great figure 
which he had drawn here in chalk was only an old 
man sitting on a fallen tree — only that. He had 
seen old Michel, the woodman, sitting so at even¬ 
ing many a time. He had never had a soul to tell 
him of outline or perspective, of anatomy or of 
shadow; and yet he had given all the weary, worn- 
out age, all the sad, quiet patience, all the rugged, 
care-worn pathos of his original, and given them 
so that the old lonely figure was a poem, sitting 
there meditative and alone on the dead tree, with 
the darkness of the descending night behind him. 

It was rude, of course, in a way, and had many 


164 


HA WT HORNE CL A SSICS 


faults, no doubt; and yet it was real, true in 
nature, true in art, and very mournful, and in a 
manner beautiful. 

Patrasche had lain quiet countless hours watch¬ 
ing its gradual creation after the labor of each 
day was done, and he knew that Nello had a hope 
— vain and wild perhaps, but strongly cherished — 
of sending this great drawing to compete for a 
prize of two hundred francs a year which it was 
announced in Antwerp would be open to every 
lad of talent, scholar or peasant, under eighteen 
who would attempt to win it with some unaided 
work of chalk or pencil. Three of the foremost 
artists in the town of Rubens were to be the 
judges and elect the victor according to his merits. 

All the spring and summer and autumn Nello 
had been at work upon this treasure, which if 
triumphant would build him his first step toward 
independence and the mysteries of the art which 
he blindly, ignorantly, and yet passionately adored. 

He said nothing to any one ; his grandfather 
would not have understood, and little Alois was 
lost to him. Only to Patrasche he told all, and 
whispered, “ Rubens would give it me, I think, if 
he knew.” 

Patrasche thought so too, for he knew that 
Rubens had loved dogs or he had never painted 
them with such exquisite fidelity ; and men who 
loved dogs were, as Patrasche knew, always pitiful. 

The drawings were to go in on the first day 


ENGLISH STORIES 


165 


of December, and the decision be given on the 
twenty-fourth, so that he who should win might 
rejoice with all his people at the Christmas season. 

In the twilight of a bitter wintry day, and with 
a beating heart, now quick with hope, now faint 
with fear, Nello placed the great picture on his 
little green milk cart, and took it, with the help 
of Patrasche, into the town, and there left it, as 
enjoined, at the doors of a public building. 

44 Perhaps it is worth nothing at all ; how can 
I tell ? ” he thought, with the heartsickness of a 
great timidity. Now that he had left it there, 
it seemed to him so hazardous, so vain, so foolish, 
to dream that he, a little lad with bare feet who 
barely knew his letters, could do anything at 
which great painters, real artists, could ever deign 
to look. Yet he took heart as he went by the 
cathedral; the lordly form of Rubens seemed to 
rise from the fog and the darkness, and to loom 
in its magnificence before him, while the lips, with 
their kindly smile, seemed to him to murmur, 
44 Nay; have courage! It was not by a weak 
heart and by faint fears that I wrote my name 
for all time upon Antwerp.” 

Nello ran home through the cold night com¬ 
forted. He had done his best ; the rest must be 
as God willed, he thought, in that innocent, un¬ 
questioning faith which had been taught him in 
the little gray chapel among the willows and the 
poplar trees. 


166 


IIA WTIIORNE CLASSICS 


The winter was very sharp already. That night 
after they had reached the hut, snow fell, and fell 
for very many days after that ; so that the paths 
and the divisions in the fields were all obliterated, 
and all the smaller streams were frozen over, and 
the cold was intense upon the plains. Then, in¬ 
deed, it became hard work to go around for the 
milk while the world was all dark, and carry it 
through the darkness to the silent town. Hard 
work, especially for Patrasche ; for the passage of 
the years that were only bringing Nello a stronger 
youth were bringing him old age, and his joints 
were stiff and his bones ached often. But he 
would never give up his share of the labor. 
Nello would fain have spared him and drawn 
the cart himself, but Patrasche would not allow it. 
All he would ever permit or accept was the help 
of a thrust from behind to the truck as it lumbered 
along through the ice ruts. Patrasche had lived 
in harness, and he was proud of it. He suffered 
a great deal sometimes from frost and the terrible 
roads and the rheumatic pains of his limbs ; but 
he only drew his breath hard and bent his stout 
neck, and trod onward with steady patience. 

“ Rest thee at home, Patrasche ; it is time thou 
didst rest, and I can quite well push in the cart 
by myself,” urged Nello many a morning ; but 
Patrasche, who understood him aright, would no 
more have consented to stay at home than a vet¬ 
eran soldier to shirk when the charge was sound- 


ENGLISH STORIES 


167 


ing ; and every day lie would rise and place himself 
in his shafts, and plod along over the snow through 
the fields that his four round feet had left their 
print upon so many, many years. 

“ One must never rest till one dies,” thought 
Patrasclie ; and sometimes it seemed to him that 
that time of rest for him was not very far off. 
His sight was less clear than it had been, and it 
gave him pain to rise after the night’s sleep, 
though he would never lie a moment in his straw 
when once the bell of the chapel tolling five let 
him know that the daybreak of labor had begun. 

“ My poor Patrasche, we shall soon lie quiet 
together, you and I,” said old Jehan Daas, stretch¬ 
ing out to stroke the head of Patrasche with the 
old withered hand which had always shared with 
him its one poor crust of bread ; and the hearts of 
the old man and the old dog ached together with 
one thought : when they were gone who would 
care for their darling ? 

One afternoon, as they came back from Ant¬ 
werp over the snow, which had become hard and 
smooth as marble over all the Flemish plains, they 
found dropped in the road a pretty little puppet, 
a tambourine player, all scarlet and gold, about 
six inches high, and, unlike greater personages 
when Fortune lets them drop, quite unspoiled and 
unhurt by its fall. It was a pretty toy. Nello 
tried to find its owner, and, failing, thought that 
it was just the thing to please Alois. 


168 


HA I VTHO llNE CL A SSlCS 


It was quite uiglit when he passed the mill 
house ; he knew the little window of her room ; 
it could he no harm, he thought, if he gave her his 
little piece of treasure-trove — they had been play¬ 
fellows so long. There was a shed with a sloping 
roof beneath her casement ; he climbed it, and 
tapped softly at the lattice ; there was a little 
light within. The child opened it and looked out, 
half frightened. 

Nello put the tambourine player into her hands. 
“ Here is a doll I found in the snow, Alois. Take 
it,” he whispered ; “ take it, and God bless thee, 
dear ! ” 

lie slid down from the shed roof before she 
had time to thank him, and ran off through the 
darkness. 

That night there Avas a fire at the mill. Out¬ 
buildings and much corn were destroyed, although 
the mill itself and the dwelling house were un¬ 
harmed. All the village Avas out in terror, and 
engines came tearing through the snoAV from Ant- 
Averp. The miller Avas insured, and Avould lose 
nothing ; nevertheless he Avas in furious wrath, 
and declared aloud that the fire Avas due to no 
accident, but to some foul intent. 

Nello, aAvakened from his sleep, ran to help with 
the rest. Baas Cogez thrust him angrily aside. 
“ Thou Avert loitering here after dark,” he said 
roughly. “ I believe, on my soul, that thou dost 
know more of the fire than any one.” 


ENGLISH STORIES 


169 


Nello heard him in silence, stupefied, not sup¬ 
posing that any one could say such things except 
in jest, and not comprehending how any one could 
pass a jest at such a time. 

Nevertheless the miller said the brutal thing 
openly to many of his neighbors in the day that 
followed ; and, though no serious charge was ever 
preferred against the lad, it got bruited about that 
Nello had been seen in the mill yard after dark on 
some unspoken errand, and that he bore Baas 
Cogez a grudge for forbidding his intercourse with 
little Alois ; and so the hamlet, which followed the 
sayings of its richest landowner servilely, and 
whose families all hoped to secure the riches of 
Alois in some future time for their sons, took the 
hint to give grave looks and cold words to old 
Jelian Daas’s grandson. No one said anything to 
him openly, but all the village agreed together to 
humor the miller’s prejudice, and at the cottages 
and farms where Nello and Patrasche called every 
morning for the milk for Antwerp, downcast 
glances and brief phrases replaced to them the 
broad smiles and cheerful greetings to which they 
had been always used. No one really credited 
the miller’s absurd suspicions, nor the outrageous 
accusations born of them ; but the people were all 
very poor and very ignorant, and the one rich man 
of the place had pronounced against him. Nello, 
in his innocence and his friendlessness, had no 
strength to stem the popular tide. 


170 


IIA WTHORNE CLASSICS 


“ Thou art very cruel to the lad,” the miller’s 
wife dared to say, weeping, to her lord. “ Sure, 
he is an innocent lad and a faithful, and would 
never dream of any such wickedness, however 
sore his heart might be.” 

But Baas Cogez, being an obstinate man, having 
once said a thing, held to it doggedly, though in 
his innermost soul he knew well the injustice that 
he was committing. 

Meanwhile Nello endured the injury done against 
him with a certain proud patience that disdained 
to complain ; he only gave way a little when he 
was quite alone with old Patrasche. Besides he 
thought, “ If it should win ! They will be sorry 
then perhaps.” 

Still, to a boy not quite sixteen, and who had 
dwelt in one little world all his short life, and in 
his childhood had been caressed and applauded on 
all sides, it. was a hard trial to have the whole 
of that little world turn against him for naught. 
Especially hard in that bleak, snowbound, famine- 
stricken winter time, when the only light and 
warmth there could be found abode beside the 
village hearths and in the kindly greetings of 
neighbors. In the winter time all drew nearer 
to each other, all to all, except to Nello and 
Patrasche, with whom none now would have any¬ 
thing to do, and who were left to fare as they 
might with the old, paralyzed, bedridden man in 
the little cabin, whose fire was often low, and 


ENGLISH STORIES 


171 


whose board was often without bread ; for there 
was a buyer from Antwerp who had taken to 
drive his mule in of a day for the milk of the 
various dairies, and there were onty three or four 
of the people who had refused his terms of 
purchase and remained faithful to the little green 
cart. So that the burden which Patrasche drew 
had become very light, and the centime 1 pieces 
in Nello’s pouch had become, alas ! very small 
likewise. 

The dog would stop, as usual, at all the familiar 
gates which were now closed to him, and look up 
at them with wistful, mute appeal; and it cost 
the neighbors a pang to shut their doors and 
their hearts, and let Patrasche draw his cart on 
again empty. Nevertheless they did it, for they 
desired to please Baas Cogez. 

Noel 2 was close at hand. 

The weather was very wild and cold; the 
snow was six feet deep, and the ice was firm 
enough to bear oxen and men upon it everywhere. 
At this season the little village was always gay 
and cheerful. At the poorest dwelling there 
were possets and cakes, joking and dancing, 
sugared saints and gilded Jesus. The merry 
Flemish bells jingled everywhere on the horses ; 
everywhere within doors some well-filled soup pot 
sang and smoked over the stove ; and everywhere 

1 A centime is but a small coin at best, — a fifth of a cent. 

2 Christmas. 


172 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


over the snow without laughing maidens pattered 
in bright kerchiefs and stout kirtles, going to and 
from the mass. Only in the little hut it was very 
dark and very cold. 

Nello and Patrasche were left utterly alone, for 
one night in the week before the Christmas Day 
death entered there, and took away from life for¬ 
ever old Jehan Daas, who had never known of 
life aught save its poverty and its pains. He had 
long been half dead, incapable of any movement 
except a feeble gesture, and powerless for any¬ 
thing beyond a gentle word ; and yet his loss fell 
on them both with a great horror in it; they 
mourned him passionately. He had passed away 
from them in his sleep, and when in the gray 
dawn they learned their bereavement, unutterable 
solitude and desolation seemed to close around 
them. He had long been only a poor, feeble, 
paralyzed old man, who could not raise a hand in 
their defense ; but he had loved them well, his 
smile had always welcomed their return. They 
mourned for him unceasingly, refusing to be com¬ 
forted, as in the white winter day they followed 
the deal shell that held his body to the nameless 
grave by the little gray church. They were his 
only mourners, these two whom he had left friend¬ 
less upon earth — the young boy and the old 
dog. 

“ Surely he will relent now, and let the poor 
lad come hither ? ” thought the miller’s wife, 


ENGLISH STORIES 


173 


glancing at her husband where he smoked by the 
hearth. 

Baas Cogez knew her thought, but he hardened 
his heart, and would not unbar his door as the 
little, humble funeral went by. “ The boy is a 
beggar,” he said to himself ; u he shall not be 
about Alois.” 

The woman dared not say anything aloud, but 
when the grave was closed and the mourners had 
gone, she put a wreath of immortelles into Alois’s 
hands, and bade her go and lay it reverently on 
the dark, unmarked mound where the snow was 
displaced. 

Nello and Patrasche went home with broken 
hearts. But even of that poor, melancholy, cheer¬ 
less home they were denied the consolation. 
There was a month’s rent overdue for their little 
home, and when Nello had paid the last sad ser¬ 
vice to the dead he had not a coin left. He went 
and begged grace of the owner of the hut, a cob¬ 
bler who went every Sunday night to drink his 
pint of wine and smoke with Baas Cogez. The 
cobbler would grant no mercy. He was a harsh, 
miserly man, and loved money. He claimed in 
default of his rent every stick and stone, every 
pot and pan, in the hut, and bade Nello and Pa¬ 
trasche be out of it on the morrow. 

Now the cabin was lowly enough, and in some 
sense miserable enough, and yet their hearts clove 
to it with a great affection. They had been so 


174 


IIAWTIIOBNE CLASSICS 


happy there, and in the summer, with its clamber¬ 
ing vine and its flowering beans, it was so pretty 
and bright in the midst of the sun-lighted fields ! 
Their life in it had been full of labor and priva¬ 
tion, and yet they had been so well content, so 
gay of heart, running together to meet the old 
man’s never-failing smile of welcome ! 

All night long the boy and the dog sat by the 
fireless hearth in the darkness, drawn close to¬ 
gether for warmth and sorrow. Their bodies 
were insensible to the cold, but their hearts 
seemed frozen in them. 

When the morning broke over the white, chill 
earth it was the morning of Christmas eve. With 
a shudder, Nello clasped close to him his only 
friend, while his tears fell hot and fast on the 
dog’s frank forehead. “ Let us go, Patrasche — 
dear, dear Patrasche,” he murmured. “ We will 
not wait to be kicked out; let us go.” 

Patrasche had no will but his, and they went 
sadly, side by side, out from the little place 
which was so dear to them both, and in which 
every humble, homely thing was to them pre¬ 
cious and beloved. Patrasche drooped his head 
wearily as he passed by his own green cart ; it 
was no longer his, — it had to go with the rest 
to pay the rent, — and his brass harness lay idle 
and glittering on the snow. The dog could have 
lain down beside it and died for very heartsick¬ 
ness as he went, but while the lad lived and 


ENGLISH STORIES 


175 


needed him Patrasche would not yield and give 
way. 

They took the old accustomed road into Ant¬ 
werp. The day had yet scarce more than dawned; 
most of the shutters were still closed, but some 
of the villagers were about. They took no no¬ 
tice while the dog and the boy passed by them. 
At one door Nello paused and looked wistfully 
within ; his grandfather had done many a kindly 
turn in neighbor’s service to the people who 
dwelt there. 

“ Would you give Patrasche a crust ? ” he said 
timidly. “ He is old, and he has had nothing 
since last forenoon.” 

The woman shut the door hastily, murmuring 
some vague saying about wheat and rye being 
very dear that season. The boy and the dog 
went on again wearily ; they asked no more. 

By slow and painful ways they reached Ant¬ 
werp as the chimes tolled ten. 

“ If I had anything about me I could sell to get 
him bread ! ” thought Nello ; but he had nothing 
except the wisp of linen and serge that covered 
him, and his pair of wooden shoes. 

Patrasche understood, and nestled his nose into 
the lad’s hand as though to^ pray him not to be 
disquieted for any woe or want of his. 

The winner of the drawing prize was to be pro¬ 
claimed at noon, and to the public building where 
he had left his treasure Nello made his way. On 


176 


IIA wrIIORNE CLASSICS 


the steps and in the entrance hall was a crowd of 
youths, — some of his age, some older, all with 
parents or relatives or friends. His heart was 
sick with fear as he went among them holding 
Patrasche close to him. The great bells of the 
city clashed out the hour of noon with brazen 
clamor ; the doors of the inner hall were opened; 
the eager, panting throng rushed in. It was 
known that the selected picture would be raised 
above the rest upon a wooden dais. 

A mist obscured Nello’s sight, his head swam, 
his limbs almost failed him. When his vision 
cleared he saw a drawing raised on high ; it was 
not his own ! A slow, sonorous voice was pro¬ 
claiming aloud that victory had been adjudged to 
Stephan Iviesslinger, born in the burg of Antwerp, 
son of a wharfinger in that town. 

When Nello recovered his consciousness he was 
lying on the stones without, and Patrasche was 
trying with every art he knew to call him back to 
life. In the distance a throng of the youths of 
Antwerp were shouting around their successful 
comrade, and escorting him with acclamations to 
his home upon the quay. 

The boy staggered to his feet and drew the dog 
into his embrace. “ It is all over, dear Patras¬ 
che,” he murmured — “ all over ! ” 

He rallied himself as best he could, for he was 
weak from fasting, and retraced his steps to the 
village. Patrasche paced by his side, with his 


ENGLISH STORIES 


177 


head drooping and his old limbs feeble from hun¬ 
ger and sorrow. 

The snow was falling fast; a keen hurricane 
blew from the north ; it was bitter as death on 
the plains. It took them long to traverse the 
familiar path, and the bells were sounding four 
of the clock as they approached the hamlet. 
Suddenly Patrasche paused, arrested by a scent 
in the snow, scratched, whined, and drew out 
with his teeth a small case of brown leather. He 
held it up to Nello in the darkness. Where they 
were there stood a little Calvary, and a lamp 
burned dully under the cross ; the boy mechani¬ 
cally turned the case to the light; on it was the 
name Baas Cogez, and within it were notes for 
two thousand francs. 

The sight roused the lad a little from his stupor. 
He thrust it in his shirt, and stroked Patrasche 
and drew him onward. The dog looked up wist¬ 
fully in his face. 

Nello made straight for the mill house, and 
went to the house door and struck on its panels. 
The miller’s wife opened it weeping, with little 
Alois clinging close to her skirts. “ Is it thee, thou 
poor lad ? ” she said, kindly, through her tears. 
“ Get thee gone ere the Baas see thee. We are in 
sore trouble to-night. He is out seeking for a 
power of money that he has let fall riding home¬ 
ward, and*in this snow he never will find it ; and 
God knows it will go nigh to ruin us. It is 


N 


178 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


Heaven’s own judgment for the things we have 
done to thee.” 

Nello put the note case in her hand, and called 
Patrasche within the house. “ Patrasche found 
the money to-night,” he said, quickly. “Tell 
Baas Cogez so ; I think he will not deny the dog 
shelter and food in his old age. Keep him from pur¬ 
suing me, and I pray of you to be good to him.” 

Ere either woman or dog knew what he meant 
he had stooped and kissed Patrasche, then closed 
the door hurriedly, and disappeared in the gloom 
of the fast-falling night. 

The woman and the child stood speechless with 
joy and fear ; Patrasche vainly spent the fury of 
his anguish against the iron-bound oak of the 
barred house door. They did not dare unbar the 
door and let him forth ; they tried all they could 
to solace him. They brought him sweet cakes 
and juicy meats ; they tempted him with the best 
they had ; they tried to lure him to abide by the 
warmth of the hearth ; but it was of no avail. 
Patrasche refused to be comforted or to stir from 
the barred portal. 

It was six o’clock when from an opposite en¬ 
trance the miller at last came, jaded and broken, 
into his wife’s presence. “ It is lost forever,” he 
said, with an ashen cheek and a quiver in his stern 
voice. “We have looked with lanterns every¬ 
where ; it is gone — the little maiden’s portion 
and all ! ” 


ENGLISH STORIES 


179 


His wife put the money into his hand, and told 
him how it had come to her. The strong man 
sank trembling into a seat and covered his face, 
ashamed and almost afraid. “ I have been cruel 
to the lad,” he muttered at length ; “ I deserved 
not to have good at liis hands.” 

Little Alois, taking courage, crept close to her 
father and nestled against him her fair curly head. 
“Nello may come here again, father?” she whis¬ 
pered. “ He may come to-morrow as he used 
to do?” 

The miller pressed her in his arms ; his hard, 
sunburnt face was very pale, and liis mouth trem¬ 
bled. “ Surely, surely,” he answered his child. 
“ He shall bide here on Christmas Day, and any 
other day he will. God helping me, I will make 
amends to the boy — I will make amends.” 

Little Alois kissed him in gratitude and joy ; 
then slid from his knees and ran to where the.dog 
kept watch by the door. “And to-night I may 
feast Patrasche ? ” she cried, in a child’s thought¬ 
less glee. 

Her father bent his head gravely : “Ay, ay ! let 
the dog have the best; ” for the stern old man 
was moved and shaken to his heart’s depths. 

It was Christmas eve, and the mill house was 
filled with oak logs and squares of turf, with cream 
and honey, with meat and bread ; and the rafters 
were hung with wreaths of evergreen, and the Cal¬ 
vary and the cuckoo clock looked out from a mass 


180 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


of holly. There were little paper lanterns, too, for 
Alois, and toys of various fashions, and sweetmeats 
in bright-pictured papers. There were light and 
warmth and abundance everywhere, and the child 
would fain have made the dog a guest honored 
and feasted. 

But Patrasche would neither lie in the warmth 
nor share in the cheer. Famished he w*as and 
very cold, but without Nello he would partake 
neither of comfort nor food. Against all tempta¬ 
tion he was proof, and close against the door he 
leaned always, watching only for a means of escape. 

“He wants the lad,” said Baas Cogez. “Good 
dog ! good dog ! I will go over to the lad the first 
thing at day dawn.” For no one but Patrasche 
knew that Nello had left the hut, and no one but 
Patrasche divined that Nello had gone to face 
starvation and misery alone. 

The mill kitchen was very warm ; great logs 
crackled and flamed on the hearth ; neighbors 
came in for a glass of wine and a slice of the fat 
goose baking for supper. Alois, gleeful and sure 
of her playmate back on the morrow, bounded and 
sang and tossed back her yellow hair. Baas Cogez, 
in the fullness of his heart, smiled on her through 
moistened eyes, and spoke of the way in which 
he would befriend her favorite companion ; the 
house mother sat with calm, contented face at the 
spinning wheel ; the cuckoo in the clock chirped 
mirthful hours. Amid it all Patrasche was bidden 


ENGLISH STORIES 


181 


with a thousand words of welcome to tarry there 
a cherished guest; but neither peace nor plenty 
could allure him where Nello was not. 

When the supper smoked on the board, and the 
voices were loudest and gladdest, and the Christ 
child brought choicest gifts to Alois, Patrasche, 
watching always an occasion, glided out when the 
door was unlatched by a careless newcomer, and, 
as swiftly as his weak and tired limbs would bear 
him, sped over the snow in the bitter, black night. 
He had only one thought — to follow Nello. A 
human friend might have paused for the pleasant 
meal, the cheery warmth, the cozy slumber ; but 
that was not the friendship of Patrasche. He re¬ 
membered a bygone time, when an old man and a 
little child had found him sick unto death in the 
wayside ditch. 

Snow had fallen freshly all the evening long ; it 
was now nearly ten ; the trail of the boy’s footsteps 
was almost obliterated. It took Patrasche long to 
discover any scent. When at last he found it, it 
was lost again quickly, and lost and recovered, and 
again lost and again recovered, a hundred times 
or more. 

The night was very wild. The lamps under the 
wayside crosses were blown out; the roads were 
sheets of ice ; the impenetrable darkness hid every 
trace of habitations ; there was no living thing 
abroad. All the cattle were housed, and in all the 
huts and homesteads men and women rejoiced and 


182 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


feasted. There was only Patrasclie out in the cruel 
cold — old and famished and full of pain, but with 
the strength and the patience of a great love to 
sustain him in his search. 

The trail of Nello’s steps, faint and obscure as 
it was under the new snow, went straightly along 
the accustomed tracks into Antwerp. It was past 
midnight when Patrasche traced it over the boun¬ 
daries of the town and into the narrow, tortuous 
gloomy streets. It was all quite dark in the town, 
save where some light gleamed ruddily through 
the crevices of house shutters, or some group went 
homeward with lanterns, chanting drinking songs. 
The streets were all white with ice; the high walls 
and roofs loomed black against them. There was 
scarce a sound save the riot of the winds down the 
passages as they tossed the creaking signs and 
shook the tall lamp irons. 

So many passers-by had trodden through and 
through the snow, so many diverse paths had 
crossed and recrossed each other, that the dog 
had a hard task to retain any hold on the track 
he followed. But he kept on his way, though the 
cold pierced him to the bone, and the jagged ice 
cut his feet, and the hunger in his body gnawed 
like a rat’s teeth. He kept on his way, — a poor, 
gaunt, shivering thing, — and by long patience 
traced the steps he loved into the very heart of the 
burg, and up to the steps of the great cathedral. 

“ He is gone to the things that he loved,” 


ENGLISH STORIES 


183 


thought Patrasche ; he could not understand, but 
he was full of sorrow and of pity for the art pas¬ 
sion that to him was so incomprehensible and yet 
so sacred. 

The portals of the cathedral were unclosed after 
the midnight mass. Some heedlessness in the 
custodians, too eager to go home and feast or 
sleep, or too drowsy to know whether they turned 
the keys aright, had left one of the doors unlocked. 
By that accident the footfalls Patrasche sought had 
passed through into the building, leaving the white 
marks of snow upon the dark stone floor. By that 
slender white thread, frozen as it fell, he was guided 
through the intense silence, through the immensity 
of the vaulted space — guided straight to the gates 
of the chancel, and, stretched there upon the stones, 
he found Nello. lie crept up, and touched the face 
of the boy. “ Didst thou dream that I should be 
faithless and forsake thee? I — a dog?” said 
that mute caress. 

The lad raised himself with a low cry and 
clasped him close. “Let us lie down and die 
together,” he murmured. “Men have no need 
of us, and we are all alone.” 

In answer, Patrasche crept closer yet, and laid 
his head upon the young boy’s breast. The great 
tears stood in his brown, sad eyes ; not for himself 
— for himself he was happy. 

They lay close together in the piercing cold. 
The blasts that blew over the Flemish dikes from 


184 


IIA WTIIORNE CL A SSICS 


the northern seas were like waves of ice, which froze 
every living thing they touched. The interior of 
the immense vault of stone in which they were 
was even more bitterly chill than the snow-cov¬ 
ered plains without. Now and then a bat moved 
in the shadows; now and then a gleam of light 
came on the ranks of carven figures. Under the 
Rubens they lay together quite still, and soothed 
almost into a dreaming slumber by the numbing 
narcotic of the cold. Together they dreamed of 
the old glad days when they had chased each 
other through the flowering grasses of the summer 
meadows, or sat hidden in the tall bulrushes by 
the water’s side, watching the boats go seaward 
in the sun. 

Suddenly through the darkness a great white 
radiance streamed through the vastness of the 
aisles; the moon, that was at her height, had 
broken through the clouds ; the snow had ceased 
to fall; the light reflected from the snow without 
was clear as the light of dawn. It fell through 
the arches full upon the two pictures above, from 
which the boy on his entrance had flung back the 
veil: the “ Elevation ” and the “ Descent of the 
Cross ” were for one instant visible. 

Nello rose to his feet and stretched his arms to 
them; the tears of a passionate ecstasy glistened 
on the paleness of his face. “ I have seen them 
at last! ” he cried aloud. “ O God, it is enough! ” 

His limbs failed under him, and he sank upon 


ENGLISH ST01UES 


185 


Ids knees, still gazing upward at the majesty that 
he adored. For a few brief moments the light 
illumined the divine visions that had been denied 
to him so long — light clear and sweet and strong 
as though it streamed from the throne of heaven. 
Then suddenly it passed away; once more a great 
darkness covered the face of Christ. 

The arms of the boy drew close again the body 
of the dog. “We shall see His face — there” he 
murmured ; “ and He will not part us, I think.” 

On the morrow, by the chancel of the cathedral, 
the people of Antwerp found them both. They 
were both dead; the cold of the night had frozen 
into stillness alike the young life and the old. 
When the Christmas morning broke and the priests 
came to the temple, they saw them lying thus on 
the stones together. Above, the veils were drawn 
back from, the great visions of Rubens, and the 
fresh rays of the sunrise touched the thorn-crowned 
head of the Christ. 

As the day grew on there came an old, hard- 
featured man, who wept as women weep. “ I was 
cruel to the lad,” he muttered ; “ and now I would 
have made amends, — yea, to the half of my sub¬ 
stance, — and he should have been to me as a son.” 

There came also, as the day grew apace, a 
painter who had fame in the world, and who was 
liberal of hand and of spirit. “ I seek one who 
should have had the prize yesterday, had worth 
won,” he said to the people — “a boy of rare 


186 


IIA WTIIORNE CLASSICS 


promise and genius. An old woodcutter on a 
fallen tree at eventide — that was all his theme ; 
but there was greatness for the future in it. I 
would fain find him, and take him with me and 
teach him art.” 

And a little child with curling fair hair, sobbing 
bitterly as she clung to her father’s arm, cried 
aloud, “O Nello, come ! We have all ready for 
thee. The Christ child’s hands are full of gifts, 
and the old piper will play for us; and the mother 
says thou shalt stay by the hearth and burn nuts 
with us all the Noel week long — yes, even to the 
Feast of the Kings! And Patrasche will be so 
happy ! O Nello, wake and come ! ” 

But the young, pale face, turned upward to the 
light of the great Rubens with a smile upon its 
mouth, answered them all, “ It is too late.” 

For the sweet, sonorous bells went ringing 
through the frost, and the sunlight shone upon 
the plains of snow, and the populace trooped gay 
and glad through the streets; but Nello and Pa¬ 
trasche no more asked charity at their hands. All 
they needed now Antwerp gave unbidden. 

Death had been more pitiful to them than longer 
life would have been. It had taken the one in 
the loyalty of love, and the other in the innocence 
of faith, from a world which for love has no 
recompense and for faith no fulfillment. 

All their lives they had been together, and in 
their deaths they were not divided; for when they 


ENGLISH STORIES 


187 


were found, the arms of the boy were folded too 
closely around the dog to be severed without vio¬ 
lence, and the people of their little village, contrite 
and ashamed, implored a special grace for them, 
and, making them one grave, laid them to rest 
there side by side—forever! 


THE SIRE DE MALETROIT’S DOOR 


BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 


Denis de Beaulieu was not yet two-and- 
twenty, but he counted himself a grown man, 
and a very accomplished cavalier into the bargain. 
Lads were early formed in that rough, warfaring 
epoch ; and when one has been in a pitched battle 
and a dozen raids, has killed one’s man in an hon¬ 
orable fashion, and knows a thing or two of 
strategy and mankind, a certain swagger in the 
gait is surely to be pardoned. He had put up his 
horse with due care, and supped with due delibera¬ 
tion ; and then, in a very agreeable frame of mind, 
went out to pay a visit in the gray of the evening. 
Tt was not a very wise proceeding on the young 
man’s part. He would have done better to re¬ 
main beside the fire or go decently to bed. For 
the town was full of the troops of Burgundy and 
England under a mixed command 1 ; and though 
Denis was there on safe-conduct , 2 his safe-conduct 
was like to serve him little on a chance encounter. 

1 A mixed command, i.e. with no single authority over them. 

2 Denis was presumably attached to the fortunes of the king of 
France, and so hostile to the English and Burgundians, 

188 


ENGLISH STORIES 


189 


It was September, 1429 1 ; the weather had 
fallen sharp ; a flighty, piping wind, laden with 
showers, beat about the township, 2 and the dead 
leaves ran riot along the streets. Here and there 
a window was already lighted up ; and the noise 
of men-at-arms making merry over supper within, 
came forth in fits and was swallowed up and car¬ 
ried away by the wind. The night fell swiftly ; 
the flag of England, fluttering on the spire top, 
grew ever fainter and fainter against the flying 
clouds — a black speck like a swallow in the 
tumultuous, leaden chaos of the sky. As the 
night fell the wind rose, and began to hoot under 
archways and roar amid the treetops in the valley 
below the town. 

Denis de Beaulieu walked fast and was soon 
knocking at his friend’s door; but though he 
promised himself to stay only a little while and 
make an early return, his welcome was so pleas¬ 
ant, and he found so much to delay him, that it 

1 The date, and the place afterward, are given us that we 
* may have a sort of background for the story. The time falls in 

a period when France was torn to pieces by foreign and domes¬ 
tic enemies. The English kings claimed Normandy and other 
western provinces; the Dukes of Burgundy were practically inde¬ 
pendent monarclis in the eastern parts; and so at this time were 
the kings of Navarre and the Counts of Provence in the South; 
even France itself, what there was of it, compared with the country 
to-day, was a mere quarreling ground for powerful nobles. The 
year 1429, however, was the year in which Joan of Arc arose to 
help the weak Charles VII against his two most powerful enemies. 

2 A curious word to use here; in England and America it has 
a specific meaning. 


190 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


was already long past midnight before he said 
good-by upon the threshold. The wfnd had 
fallen again in the meantime; the night was as 
black as the grave; not a star nor a glimmer of 
moonshine slipped through the canopy of cloud. 
Denis was ill acquainted with the intricate lanes 
of Chateau Landon 1 ; even by daylight he had 
found some trouble in picking his way; and in 
this absolute darkness he soon lost it altogether. 
He was certain of one thing only — to keep mount¬ 
ing the hill; for his friend’s house lay at the lower 
end, or tail, of Chateau Landon, while the inn 
was up at the head, under the great church spire. 
With this clew to go upon he stumbled and groped 
forward, now breathing more freely in open places 
where there was a good slice of sky overhead, now 
feeling along the wall in stifling closes . 2 It 
is an eerie and mysterious position to be thus 
submerged in opaque blackness in an almost un¬ 
known town. The silence is terrifying in its pos¬ 
sibilities. The touch of cold window bars to the 
exploring hand startles the man like the touch of 
a toad; the inequalities of the pavement shake 
his heart into his mouth; a piece of denser dark¬ 
ness threatens an ambuscade or a chasm in the 
pathway; and where the air is brighter, the 

1 Chateau Landon is still a town of France, about sixty miles 
south of Paris, and equally far from what was, in 1429, the frontier 
of Burgundy. 

2 Close is the name applied, more usually in Scotland, to a 
narrow lane in a city. 


ENGLISH STORIES 


191 


houses put on strange and bewildering appear¬ 
ances, as if to lead him farther from his way. 
For Denis, who had to regain his inn without 
attracting notice, there was real danger as well 
as mere discomfort in the walk 1 ; and he went 
warily and boldly at once, and at every corner 
paused to make an observation. 

He had been for some time threading a lane so 
narrow that he could touch a wall with either 
hand when it began to open out and go sharply 
downward. Plainly this lay no longer in the direc¬ 
tion of his inn; but the hope of a little more light 
tempted him forward to reconnoiter. The lane 
ended in a terrace with a bartizan wall , 2 which 
gave an outlook between high houses, as out of an 
embrasure, into the valley lying dark and form¬ 
less several hundred feet below. Denis looked 
down, and could discern a few treetops waving 
and a single speck of brightness where the river 
ran across a weir. The weather was clearing up, 
and the sky had lightened, so as to show the out¬ 
line of the heavier clouds and the dark margin of 
the hills. By the uncertain glimmer, the house 
on his left hand should be a place of some preten¬ 
sions ; it was surmounted by several pinnacles 
and turret-tops; the round stern 3 of a chapel, 

1 It was an unsettled time, and things were dangerous at 
night. 

2 A bartizan is a little tower, here perhaps extending from the 
terrace over the lower level. 

3 More commonly called the apse. 


192 


IIA WTIIORNE CLASSICS 


with a fringe of flying buttresses , 1 projected 
boldly from the main block; and the door was 
sheltered under a deep porch carved with figures 
and overhung by two long gargoyles . 2 The win¬ 
dows of the chapel gleamed through their intri¬ 
cate tracery with a light as of many tapers, and 
threw out the buttresses and the peaked roof in 
a more intense blackness against the sky. It was 
plainly the hotel of some great family of the 
neighborhood ; and as it reminded Denis of a 
townhouse of his own at Bourges, he stood for 
some time gazing up at it and mentally gauging 
the skill of the architects and the consideration 
of the two families. 

There seemed to be no issue to the terrace but 
the lane by which he had reached it; he could 
only retrace his steps, but he had gained some 
notion of his whereabouts, and hoped by this 
means to hit the main thoroughfare and speedily 
regain the inn. He was reckoning without that 
chapter of accidents which was to make this night 
memorable above all others in his career; for he 
had not gone back over a hundred yards before 
he saw a light coming to meet him, and heard 
loud voices speaking together in the echoing nar¬ 
rows of the lane. It was a party of men-at-arms 
going the night round 3 with torches. Denis 


1 A kind of support for the wall in Gothic architecture. 

2 AVater spouts carved into grotesque and fantastic shapes. 

8 A night round was a sort of ancient and irregular police-duty. 


ENGLISH STORIES 


193 


assured himself that they had all been making 
free with the wine bowl, and were in no mood to 
be particular about safe-conducts or the niceties 
of chivalrous war. It was as like as not that they 
would kill him like a dog and leave him where he 
fell. The situation was inspiriting but nervous. 
Their own torches would conceal him from sight, 
he reflected; and he hoped that they would drown 
the noise of his footsteps with their own empty 
voices. If he were but fleet and silent, he might 
evade their notice altogether. 

Unfortunately, as he turned to beat a retreat, 
his foot rolled upon a pebble; he fell against the 
wall with an ejaculation, and his sword rang 
loudly on the stones. Two or three voices de¬ 
manded who went there — some in French, some 
in English; but Denis made no reply, and ran 
the faster down the lane. Once upon the terrace 
he paused to look back. They still kept calling 
after him, and just then began to double the pace 
in pursuit, with a considerable clank of armor, and 
great tossing of the torchlight to and fro in the 
narrow jaws of the passage. 

Denis cast a look around and darted into the 
porch. There he might escape observation, or — 
if that were too much to expect — was in a capital 
posture whether for parley or defence. So think¬ 
ing, he drew his sword and tried to set his back 
against the door. To his surprise, it yielded be¬ 
hind his weight; and though he turned in a 


194 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


moment, continued to swing back on oiled and 
noiseless hinges, until it stood wide open on a 
black interior. When things fall out opportunely 
for the person concerned, he is not apt to be 
critical about the how or why, his own immediate 
personal convenience seeming a sufficient reason 
for the strangest oddities and revolutions in our 
sublunary things; and so Denis, without a mo¬ 
ment’s hesitation, stepped within and partly closed 
the door behind him to conceal his place of refuge. 
Nothing was futher from his thoughts than to 
close it altogether; but for some inexplicable rea¬ 
son — perhaps by a spring or a weight — the pon¬ 
derous mass of oak whipped itself out of his 
fingers and clanked to, with a formidable rumble 
and a noise like the falling of an automatic bar. 

The round, at that very moment, debouched 1 
upon the terrace and proceeded to summon him 
with shouts and curses. He heard them ferreting 
in the dark corners ; the stock of a lance even 
rattled along the outer surface of the door behind 
which he stood ; but these gentlemen were in too 
high a humor to be long delayed, and soon made 
off down a corkscrew pathway which had escaped 
Denis’s observation, and passed out of sight and 
hearing along the battlements of the town. 

Denis breathed again. He gave them a few 
minutes’ grace for fear of accidents, and then 
groped about for some means of opening the door 
1 Came out. 


ENGLISH STORIES 


195 


and slipping forth again. The inner surface was 
quite smooth, not a handle, not a molding, not a 
projection of any sort. He got his finger-nails 
round the edges and pulled, but the mass was 
immovable. He shook it, it was as firm as a rock. 
Denis de Beaulieu frowned and gave vent to a 
little noiseless whistle. What ailed the door ? he 
wondered. Why w^as it open ? How came it to 
shut so easily and so effectually after him ? There 
was something obscure and underhand about all 
this, that was little to the young man’s fancy. 
It looked like a snare ; and yet who could suppose 
a snare in such a quiet by-street and in a house of 
so prosperous and even noble an exterior? And 
yet—snare or no snare, intentionally or uninten¬ 
tionally — here he was, prettily trapped; and for 
the life of him he could see no way out of it again. 
The darkness began to weigh upon him. He gave 
ear; all was silent without, but within and close 
by he seemed to catcli a faint sighing, a faint, sob¬ 
bing rustle, a little stealthy creak — as though 
many persons were at his side, holding themselves 
quite still, and governing even their respiration 
with the extreme of slyness. The idea went to 
his vitals with a shock, and he faced about sud¬ 
denly as if to defend his life. Then, for the first 
time, he became aware of a light about the level of 
his eyes and at some distance in the interior of 
the house — a vertical thread of light, widening 
toward the bottom, such as might escape between 


196 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


two wings of arras 1 over a doorway. To see any¬ 
thing was a relief to Denis; it was like a piece of 
solid ground to a man laboring in a morass; his 
mind seized upon it with avidity; and he stood 
staring at it and trying to piece together some 
logical conception of his surroundings. Plainly 
there was a flight of steps ascending from his own 
level to that of this illuminated doorway; and 
indeed he thought he could make out another 
thread of light, as fine as a needle and as faint as 
phosphorescence, which might very well be reflected 
along the polished wood of a handrail. Since lie 
had begun to suspect that he was not alone, his 
heart had continued to beat with smothering vio¬ 
lence, and an intolerable desire for action of any 
sort had possessed itself of his spirit. He was in 
deadly peril, he believed. What could be more 
natural than to mount the staircase, lift the cur¬ 
tain and confront his difficulty at once ? At least 
he would be dealing with something tangible; at 
least he would be no longer in the dark. He 
stepped slowly forward with outstretched hands, 
until his foot struck the bottom step; then he 
rapidly scaled the stair, stood for a moment to 
compose his expression, lifted the arras and 
went in. 

He found himself in a large apartment of 
polished stone. There were three doors; one 

1 The tapestry which was so common a piece of house-furnishing 
in the Middle Ages. 


ENGLISH STORIES 


197 


on each of three sides; all similarly curtained 
with tapestry. The fourth side was occupied 
by two large windows and a great stone chimney- 
piece, carved with the arms of the Maletroits. 
Denis recognized the bearings , 1 and was gratified 
to find himself in such good hands. The room 
was strongly illuminated ; but it contained little 
furniture except a heavy table and a chair or two, 
the hearth was innocent of fire, and the pavement 
was but sparsely strewn with rushes clearly many 
days old. 

On a high chair beside the chimney, and 
directly facing Denis as he entered, sat a little 
old gentleman in a fur tippet. He sat with his 
legs crossed and his hands folded, and a cup of 
spiced wine stood by his elbow on a bracket on 
the wall. His countenance had a strongly mas¬ 
culine cast; not properly human, but such as we 
see in the bull, the goat, or the domestic boar; 
something equivocal and wheedling, something 
greedy, brutal and dangerous. The upper lip 
was inordinately full, as though swollen b}' a 
blow or a toothache ; and the smile, the peaked 
eyebrows, and the small, strong eyes were quaintly 
and almost comically evil in expression. Beautiful 
white hair hung straight all round his head, like 
a saint’s, and fell in a single curl upon the tippet. 
His beard and mustache were the pink of ven- 

l The heraldic device of every noble house was necessarily 
known to all the rest of the nobility. 


198 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


erable sweetness. Age, probably in consequence 
of inordinate precautions, bad left no mark upon 
bis bands; and tbe Maletroit hand was famous. 
It would be difficult to imagine anything at once 
so fleshly and so delicate in design ; tbe taper, 
sensual fingers were like those of one of Leo¬ 
nardo’s women 1 ; the fork of the thumb made a 
dimpled protuberance when closed; the nails 
were perfectly shaped, and of a dead, surprising 
whiteness. It rendered his aspect tenfold more 
redoubtable, that a man with hands like these 
should keep them devoutly folded like a vir¬ 
gin martyr — that a man with so intent and 
startling an expression of face should sit pa¬ 
tiently on his seat and contemplate people with 
an unwinking stare, like a god, or a god’s statue. 
His quiescence seemed ironical and treacherous, 
it fitted so poorly with his looks. 

Such was Alain, Sire de Maletroit. 

Denis and he looked silently at each other for 
a second or two. 

“ Pray step in,” said the Sire de Maletroit. “ I 
have been expecting you all the evening.” 

He had not risen but he accompanied his words 
with a smile and a slight but courteous inclination 
of the head. Partly from the smile, partly from 
the strange musical murmur with which the Sire 
prefaced his observation, Denis felt a strong sliud- 

1 Leonardo da Vinci, one of the greatest of Italian painters, is 
famous for his portraits of women. 


ENGLISH STORIES 


199 


der of disgust go through his marrow. And 
what with disgust and honest confusion of mind, 
he could scarcely get words together in reply. 

“I fear,” he said, “that this is a double ac¬ 
cident. I am not the person you suppose me. 
It seems you were looking for a visit; but for 
my part, nothing was further from my thoughts 

— nothing could be more contrary to my wishes 

— than this intrusion.” 

“Well, well,” replied the old gentleman indul¬ 
gently, “here you are, which is the main point. 
Seat yourself, my friend, and put yourself en¬ 
tirely at your ease. We shall arrange our little 
affairs presently.” 

Denis preceived that the matter was still com¬ 
plicated with some misconception, and he hastened 
to continue his explanations. 

“Your door . . .” he began. 

“About my door? ” asked the other, raising his 
peaked eyebrows. “A little piece of ingenuity.” 
And he shrugged his shoulders. “A hospitable 
fancy! By your own account, you were not de¬ 
sirous of making my acquaintance. We old peo¬ 
ple look for such reluctance now and then ; when 
it touches our honor, we cast about until we find 
some way of overcoming it. You arrive unin¬ 
vited, but believe me, very welcome.” 

“ You persist in error, sir,” said Denis. “ There 
can be no question between you and me. I am a 
stranger in this countryside. My name is Denis, 


200 


HA WTIlORNE CLASSICS 


damoiseau 1 de Beaulieu. If you see me in your 
house, it is only — ” 

“ My young friend,” interrupted the other, 
“you will permit me to have my own ideas on 
that subject. They probably differ from yours 
at the present moment,” he added with a leer, 
“but time will show which of us is in the right.” 

Denis was convinced he had to do with a luna¬ 
tic. He seated himself with a shrug, content to 
wait the upshot; and a pause ensued, during 
Avhich he 'thought he could distinguish a hurried 
gabbling as of prayer from behind the arras im¬ 
mediately opposite him. Sometimes there seemed 
to be but one person engaged, sometimes two ; 
and the vehemence of the voice, low as it was, 
seemed to indicate either great haste or an agony 
of spirit. It occurred to him that this piece of 
tapestry covered the entrance to the chapel he 
had noticed from without. 

The old gentleman meanwhile surveyed Denis 
from head to foot with a smile, and from time to 
time emitted little noises like a bird or a mouse, 
which seemed to indicate a high degree of satis¬ 
faction. This state of matters became rapidly 
insupportable ; and Denis, to put an end to it, 
remarked politely that the wind had gone down. 

The old gentleman fell into a fit of silent 
laughter, so prolonged and violent that he be- 

1 The French word or title of which damoiselle, whence made¬ 
moiselle, is the feminine. It was given to young men of family. 


ENGLISH STORIES 


201 


came quite red in tlie face. Denis got upon his 
feet at once, and put on his hat with a flourish. 

“ Sir,” he said, “ if you are in your wits, you 
have affronted me grossly. If you are out of 
them I flatter myself I can find better employ¬ 
ment for my brains than to talk with lunatics. 
My conscience is clear ; you have made a fool of 
me from the first moment; you have refused to 
hear my explanations; and now there is no power 
under God will make me stay here any longer; 
and if I cannot make my way out in a more de¬ 
cent fashion, I will hack your door in pieces with 
my sword.” 

The Sire de Maletroit raised his right hand and 
wagged it at Denis with the fore and little fingers 
extended. 

“ My dear nephew,” he said, “ sit down.” 

“Nephew!” retorted Denis, “you lie in your 
throat,” and he snapped his fingers in his 
face. 

“ Sit down, you rogue! ” cried the old gentle¬ 
man, in a sudden harsh voice, like the barking of 
a dog. “ Do you fancy,” he went on, “ that when 
I had made my little contrivance for the door I 
had stopped short with that? If you prefer to be 
bound hand and foot till your bones ache, rise 
and try to go away. If you choose to remain a 
free young buck, agreeably conversing with an 
old gentleman — why, sit where you are in peace, 
and God be with you.” 


202 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


u I)o you mean I am a prisoner?” demanded 
Denis. 

“ I state the facts,” replied the other. “ I would 
rather leave the conclusion to yourself.” 

Denis sat down again. Externally he managed 
to keep pretty calm, but within he was now boil¬ 
ing with anger, now chilled with apprehension. 
He no longer felt convinced that he was dealing 
with a madman. And if the old gentleman was 
sane, what, in God’s name, had he to look for? 
What absurd or tragical adventure had befallen 
him? What countenance was he to assume.? 

While he was thus unpleasantly reflecting, the 
arras that overhung the chapel door was raised, 
and a tall priest in his robes came forth, and, giv¬ 
ing a long, keen stare at Denis, said something in 
an undertone to Sire de Maletroit. 

“She is in a better frame of spirit?” asked the 
latter. 

“ She is more resigned, messire,” replied the 
priest. 

“ Now the Lord help her, she is hard to please ! ” 
sneered the old gentleman. “ A likely stripling 
-— not ill-born — and of her own choosing, too ? 
Why, what more would the jade have?” 

“ The situation is not usual for a young dam¬ 
sel,” said the other, “ and somewhat trying to her 
blushes.” 

“ She should have thought of that before she 
began the dance! It was none of my choosing, 


ENGLISH STOBIES 


203 


God knows that; but since she is in it, by our 
lady, she shall carry it to the end.” And then 
addressing Denis, “Monsieur de Beaulieu,” he 
asked, “may I present you to my niece? She 
has been waiting your arrival, I may say, with 
even greater impatience than myself.” 

Denis had resigned himself with a good grace 
— all he desired to know was the wors't of it as 
speedily as possible ; so he rose at once, and bowed 
in acquiescence. The Sire de Maletroit followed 
his example and limped, with the assistance of 
the chaplain’s arm, toward the chapel door. The 
priest pulled aside the arras, and all three en¬ 
tered. The building had considerable architec¬ 
tural pretensions. A light groining 1 sprang 
from six stout columns, and hung down in two 
rich pendants from the center of the vault. The 
place terminated behind the altar in a round end, 
embossed and honeycombed with a superfluity of 
ornament in relief, and pierced by many little 
windows shaped like stars, trefoils , 2 or wheels. 
These windows were imperfectly glazed, so that 
the night air circulated freely in the chapel. The 
tapers, of which there must have been half a hun- 

1 An arrangement of the ceiling formed by the intersection of 
several curved surfaces. In this case there were six columns, two 
to each side, probably, and the others in what is called “ the stern 
of the chapel,” between each pair of which was a wall space or a 
window; as these wall spaces were carried into the roof, they of 
course intersected with each other, forming the groining. 

2 A common shape of window in architectural ornament. 


204 


IIA WTHORNE CL A SSICS 


dred burning on the altar, were unmercifully 
blown about; and the light went through many 
different phases of brilliancy and semi-eclipse. 
On the steps in front of the altar knelt a young 
girl richly attired as a bride. A chill settled over 
Denis as he observed her costume; he fought with 
desperate energy against the conclusion that was 
being thrust upon his mind; it could not — 
should not — be as he feared. 

“ Blanche,” said the Sire, in his most flutelike 
tones, “ I have brought a friend to see you, my 
little girl; turn round and give him your pretty 
hand. It is good to be devout; but it is neces¬ 
sary to be polite, my niece.” 

The girl rose to her feet and turned toward 
the newcomers. She moved all of a piece; and 
shame and exhaustion were expressed in every 
line of her fresh, young body; and she held her 
head down and kept her eyes upon the pavement, 
as she came slowly forward. In the course of her 
advance, her eyes fell upon Denis de Beaulieu’s 
feet — feet of which he was justly vain, be it re¬ 
marked, and wore in the most elegant accouter¬ 
ment even while traveling. She paused — started, 
as if his yellow boots had conveyed some shock¬ 
ing meaning — and glanced suddenly up into the 
wearer’s countenance. Their eyes met; shame 
gave place to horror and terror in her looks ; the 
blood left her lips; with a piercing scream she 
covered her face and sank upon the chapel floor. 


ENGLISH STORIES 


205 


u That is not the man ! ” she cried. “ My uncle, 
that is not the man ! ” 

The Sire de Maletroit chirped agreeably. “ Of 
course not,” he said, “ I expected as much. It 
was so unfortunate you could not remember his 
name.” 

“ Indeed,” she cried, “indeed, I have never 
seen this person till this moment — I have never 
so much as set eyes upon him — I never wish 
to see him again. Sir,” she said, turning to 
Denis, “ if you are a gentleman you will bear me 
out. Have I ever seen you — have you ever seen 
me — before this accursed hour ? ” 

“ To speak for myself, I have never had that 
pleasure,” answered the young man. “This is the 
first time, messire, that I have met with your en¬ 
gaging niece.” 

The old man shrugged his shoulders. 

“ I am distressed to hear it,” he said. “ But it 
is never too late to begin. 1 had little more 
acquaintance with my own late lady ere I married 
her; which proves,” he added, with a grimace, “that 
these impromptu marriages may often produce an 
excellent understanding in the long run. As the 
bridegroom is to have a voice in the matter, I will 
give him two hours to make up for lost time 
before we proceed with the ceremony.” And he 
turned toward the door followed by the clergy¬ 
man. 

The girl was on her feet in a moment. “ My 


206 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


uncle, you cannot be in earnest,” she said. “ I 
declare before God I will stab myself rather than 
be forced on that young man. The heart rises at 
it ; God forbids such marriages ; you dishonor your 
white hair. Oh, my uncle, pity me ! There is 
not a woman in all the world but would prefer 
death to such a nuptial. Is it possible,” she 
added, faltering — “ is it possible that you do not 
believe me — that you still think this ” — and she 
pointed at Denis with a tremor of anger and con¬ 
tempt — “ that you still think this to be the 
man?” 

“ Frankly,” said the old gentleman, pausing on 
the threshold,I do. But let me explain to you 
once for all, Blanche de Maletroit, my way of 
thinking about this affair. When you took it 
into your head to dishonor my family and the 
name that I have borne, in peace and war, for 
more than three score years, you forfeited, 
not only the right to question my designs, but 
that of looking me in the face. If your father 
had been alive, he would have spat on you and 
turned you out-of-doors. His was the hand of 
iron. You may bless your God you have only 
to deal with the hand of velvet, mademoiselle. It 
was my duty to get you married without delay. 
Out of pure good will, I have tried to find your 
own gallant for you. And I believe I have suc¬ 
ceeded. But before God and all the holy angels, 
Blanche de Maletroit, if I have not, I care not 


ENGLISH STOIUES 


207 


one jackstraw. So let me recommend you to be 
polite to our young friend ; for upon my word, 
your next groom may be less appetizing.” 

And with that lie went out, with the chaplain at 
his heels ; and the arras fell behind the pair. 

The girl turned upon Denis with flashing eyes. 

“And what, sir,” she demanded, “may be the 
meaning of all this ? ” 

“ God knows,” returned Denis, gloomily. “ 1 
am a prisoner in this house, which seems full of 
mad people. More I know not, and nothing do I 
understand.” 

“ And pray how came you here ? ” she asked. 

He told her as briefly as he could. “ For the 
rest,” he added, “ perhaps you will follow my ex¬ 
ample, and tell me the answer to all these riddles, 
and what, in God’s name, is like to be the end of 
it.” 

She stood silent for a little, and he could see 
her lips tremble and her tearless eyes burn with a 
feverish luster. Then she pressed her forehead in 
both hands. 

“ Alas, how my head aches ! ” she said wearily — 
“ to say nothing of my poor heart ! But it is due 
to you to know my story, unmaidenly as it must 
seem. I am called Blanche de Maletroit; I have 
been without father or mother for — oh ! for as 
long as I can recollect, and indeed I have been 
most unhappy all my life. Three months ago a 
young captain began to stand near me every day 


208 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


iii church. I could see that I pleased him ; I am 
much to blame, but I was so glad that any one 
should love me ; and when he passed me a letter, 
I took it home with me and read it with great 
pleasure. Since that time he has written many. 
He was so anxious to speak with me, poor fellow ! 
and kept asking me to leave the door open some 
evening that we might have two words upon 
the stair. For he knew how much my uncle 
trusted me.” She gave something like a sob at 
that, and it was a moment before she could go on. 
“ My uncle is a hard man, but he is veiy shrewd,” 
she said at last. “ He has performed many feats 
in war, and was a great person at court, and much 
trusted by Queen Isabeau 1 in old days. How he 
came to suspect me 1 cannot tell ; but it is hard 
to keep anything from his knowledge ; and this 
morning, as we came from mass, he took my hand 
into his, forced it open and read my little billet, 
walking by my side all the while. When he 
finished, he gave it back to me with great polite¬ 
ness. It contained another request to have the 
door left open ; and this has been the ruin of us 
all. My uncle kept me strictly in my room until 
evening, and then ordered me to dress myself as 
you see me — a hard mockery for a young girl, do 

1 Isabella of Bavaria was a German princess, married in her 
youth to the unfortunate Charles VI, who subsequently became 
mad. She was married in 1485), at which time Sire de Maletroit 
would have been about coming of age. She was a woman of strong 
character, and in her court he doubtless had good schooling. 


ENGLISH STOlilES 


209 


you not think so ? I suppose when he could not 
prevail with me to tell him the young captain’s 
name, he must have laid a trap for him ; into 
which, alas ! you have fallen in the anger of God. 
I looked for much confusion ; for how could I tell 
whether he was willing to take me for his wife on 
these sharp terms ? He might have been trifling 
with me from the first ; or I might have made 
myself too cheap in his eyes. But truly I had not 
looked for such a shameful punishment as this ! I 
could not think that God would let a girl be so 
disgraced before a young man. And now I tell 
you all; and I scarcely hope that you will not 
despise me.” 

Denis made her a respectful inclination. 

44 Madam,” he said, “ you have honored me by 
your confidence. It remains for me to prove that 
I am not unworthy of the honor. Is Messire de 
Maletroit at hand ? ” 

“ I believe he is writing in the salle without,” 
she answered. 

44 May I lead you thither, madam? ” asked Denis, 
offering his hand with his most courtly bearing. 

She accepted it ; and the pair passed out of the 
chapel, Blanche in a very drooping and shamefast 
condition, but Denis strutting and ruffling in the 
consciousness of a mission, and the boyish certainty 
of accomplishing it with honor. 

The Sire de Maletroit rose to meet them with an 
ironical obeisance. 


210 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


“Sir,” said Denis, with the grandest possible 
air, “ I believe I am to have some say in the matter 
of this marriage ; and let me tell you at once 
I will be no party to forcing the inclination of this 
young lady. Had it been freely offered to me, I 
should have been proud to accept her hand, for I 
perceive she is as good as she is beautiful ; but as 
things are, I have now the honor, messire, of 
refusing.” 

Blanche looked at him with gratitude in her 
eyes; but the old gentleman only smiled and 
smiled, until his smile grew positively sickening to 
Denis. 

“ I am afraid,” he said, “ Monsieur de Beaulieu, 
that you do not perfectly understand the choice I 
have offered you. Follow me, T beseech you, to 
this window.” And he led the way to one of the 
large windows which stood open on the night. 
“ You observe,” he went on, “ there is an iron ring 
in the upper masonry, and reeved through that a 
very efficacious, rope. Now, mark my words: if 
you should find your disinclination to my niece’s 
person insurmountable, T shall have you hanged out 
of this window before sunrise. I shall only proceed 
to such an extremity with the greatest regret, you 
may believe me. For it is not at all your death that 
I desire, but my niece’s establishment in life. At 
the same time, it must come to that if you prove 
obstinate. Your family, Monsieur de Beaulieu, 
is very well in its way ; but if you sprang from 


ENGLISH STORIES 


211 


Charlemagne, you should not refuse the hand of a 
Maletroit with impunity — not if she had been 
as common as the Paris road — not if she were as 
hideous as the gargoyle over my door. Neither 
my niece nor you, nor my own private feelings, 
move me at all in this matter. The honor of my 
house has been compromised ; I believe you to be 
the guilty person, at least you are now in the 
secret; and you can hardly wonder if I request 
you to wipe out the stain. If you will not, your 
blood be on your own head ! It will be no great 
satisfaction to me to have your interesting relics 
kicking their heels in the breeze below my windows, 
but half a loaf is better than no bread, and if I 
cannot cure the dishonor, I shall at least stop the 
scandal.” 

There was a pause. 

“ I believe there are other ways of settling such 
imbroglios among gentlemen,” said Denis. “ You 
wear a sword, and I hear you have used it with 
distinction.” 

The Sire de Maletroit made a signal to the 
chaplain, who crossed the room with long, silent 
strides and raised the arras over the third of the 
three doors. It was only a moment before he let 
it fall again ; but Denis had time to see a dusky 
passage full of armed men. 

“When I was a little younger, I should have 
been delighted to honor you, Monsieur de Beau¬ 
lieu,” said Sire Alain ; u but I am now too old. 


212 


IIA WTHORNE CL A SSICS 


Faithful retainers are the sinews of age, and I 
must employ the strength I have. This is one of 
the hardest things to swallow as a man grows up 
in years; but with a little patience, even this 
becomes habitual. You and the lady seem to pre¬ 
fer the salle for what remains of your two hours, 
and as I have no desire to cross your preference, 
I shall resign it to your use with all the pleasure 
in the world. No haste! ” he added, holding up 
his hand, as he saw a dangerous look come into 
Denis de Beaulieu’s face. “ If your mind revolt 
against hanging, it will be time enough two hours 
hence to throw yourself out of the window or upon 
the pikes of my retainers. Two hours of life are 
always two hours. A great many things may 
turn up in even as little a while as that. And, 
besides, if I understand her appearance, my niece 
has something to say to you. You will not dis¬ 
figure your last hours by want of politeness to a 
lady?” 

Denis looked at Blanche, and she made him an 
imploring gesture. 

It is likely that the old gentleman was hugely 
pleased at this symptom of an understanding ; for 
he smiled on both, and added sweetly : “ If you 
will give me your word of honor, Monsieur de 
Beaulieu, to await my return at the end of the 
two hours before attempting anything desperate, 
I shall withdraw my retainers, and let you speak 
in greater privacy with mademoiselle.” 


ENGLISH STORIES 


213 


Denis again glanced at the girl, who seemed to 
beseech him to agree. 

“ I give you my word of honor,” he said. 

Messire de Maletroit bowed, and proceeded to 
limp about the apartment, clearing his throat the 
while with that odd musical chirp which had 
already grown so irritating in the ears of Denis de 
Beaulieu. He first possessed himself of some 
papers which lay upon the table; then he went 
to the mouth of the passage and appeared to give 
an order to the men behind the arras ; and lastly 
he hobbled out through the door by which Denis 
had come in, turning upon the threshold to address 
a last smiling boAv to the young couple, and 
followed by the chaplain with a hand lamp. 

No sooner were they alone than Blanche ad¬ 
vanced toward Denis with her hands extended. 
Her face was flushed and excited, and her eyes 
shone with tears. 

“You shall not die!” she cried; “you shall 
marry me after all.” 

“ You seem to think, madam,” replied Denis, 
“that I stand much in fear of death.” 

“ Oh, no, no,” she said, “ I see you are no pol¬ 
troon. It is for my owll sake — I could not bear 
to have you slain for such a scruple.” 

“I am afraid,” returned Denis, “that you 
underrate the difficulty, madam. What you may 
be too generous to refuse, I may be too proud to 
accept. In a moment of noble feeling toward 


214 


IIA W THORN E CL A SSICS 


me, you forgot wliat you perhaps owe to 
others.” 1 

He had the decency to keep his eyes on the 
floor as he said this, and after he had finished, so 
as not to spy upon her confusion. She stood 
silent for a moment, then walked suddenly away, 
and falling on her uncle’s chair, fairly burst out 
sobbing. Denis was in the acme of embarrass¬ 
ment. He looked round, as if to seek for inspi¬ 
ration, and seeing a stool, plumped down upon it 
for something to do. There he sat playing with 
the guard of his rapier, and wishing himself dead 
a thousand times over, and buried in the nastiest 
kitchen-heap in France. His eyes wandered 
round the apartment, but found nothing to arrest 
them. There were such wide spaces between the 
furniture, the light fell so badly* and cheerlessly 
over all, the dark outside air looked in so coldly 
through the windows, that he thought he had 
never seen a church so vast, nor a tomb so mel¬ 
ancholy. The regular sobs of Blanche de Male- 
troit measured out the time like the ticking of a 
clock. He read the device upon the shield over 
and over again, until his eyes became obscured ; 
he stared into shadowy corners until he imagined 
they were swarming with horrible animals; and 
every now and again he awoke with a start, to 
remember that his last two hours were running, 
and death was on the march. 

1 If she were in love with another she had obligations to him. 


ENGLISH STORIES 


215 


Oftener and oftener, as the time went on, did 
his glance settle on the girl herself. Her face 
was bowed forward and covered with her hands, 
and she was shaken at intervals by the convulsive 
hiccough of grief. Even thus she was not an un¬ 
pleasant object to dwell upon, so plump and yet 
so fine, with a warm brown skin, and the most 
beautiful hair, Denis thought, in the whole world 
of womankind. Her hands were like her uncle’s; 
but they were more in place at the end of her 
young arms, and looked infinitely soft and caress¬ 
ing. He remembered how her blue eyes had 
shone upon him, full of anger, pity, and innocence. 
And the more he dwelt on her perfections, the 
uglier death looked, and the more deeply was he 
smitten with penitence at her continued tears. 
Now he felt that no man could have the courage 
to leave the world which contained so beautiful 
a creature; and now he would have given forty 
minutes of his last hours to have unsaid his cruel 
speech. 

Suddenly a hoarse and ragged peal of cockcrow 
rose to their ears from the dark valley below the 
windows. And this shattering noise in the silence 
of all around was like a light in a dark place, and 
shook them both out of their reflections. 

“ Alas, can I do nothing to help you ! ” she 
said, looking up. 

“ Madam,” replied Denis, with a fine irrele¬ 
vancy, “if I have said anything to wound you, 


216 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


believe me, it was for your own sake and not for 
mine.” 

She thanked him with a tearful look. 

“ I feel your position cruelly,” he went on. 
“The world has been bitter hard on you. Your 
uncle is a disgrace to mankind. Believe me, 
madam, there is no young gentleman in all France 
but would be glad of my opportunity, to die in 
doing you a momentary service.” 

“ I know already that you can be very brave and 
generous,” she answered. “ What I want to know 
is whether I can serve you — now or afterward,” 
she added, with a quaver. 

“ Most certainly,” he answered with a smile. 
“ Let me sit beside you as if I were a friend, 
instead of a foolish intruder ; try to forget how 
awkwardly we are placed to one another ; make 
my last moments go pleasantly ; and you will do 
me the chief service possible.” 

“You are very gallant,” she added, with a yet. 
deeper sadness . . . “ very gallant . , . and it 
somehow pains me. But draw nearer, if you 
please ; and if you find anything to say to me, 
you will at least make certain of a very friendly 
listener. Ah ! Monsieur de Beaulieu,” she broke 
forth — “ah, Monsieur de Beaulieu, how can I look 
you in the face ? ” And she fell to weeping again 
with a renewed effusion. 

“ Madam,” said Denis, taking her hand in both 
of his, “ reflect on the little time I have before me, 


ENGLISH STOHIES 


217 


and the great bitterness into which I am cast by 
the sight of your distress. Spare me, in my last 
moments, the spectacle of what I cannot cure even 
with the sacrifice of my life.” 

“ I am very selfish,” answered Blanche. “ I will 
be braver, Monsieur de Beaulieu, for your sake. 
But think if I can do you no kindness in the 
future — if you have no friends to whom I could 
carry your adieux. Charge me as heavily as you 
can ; every burden will lighten, by so little, the 
invaluable gratitude I owe you. Put it in my 
power to do something more for you than weep.” 

“ My mother is married again, and has a young 
family to care for. My brother Guichard will in¬ 
herit my fiefs 1 ; and, if I am not in error, that 
will content him amply for my death. Life is 
a little vapor that passeth away, as we are told 
by those in holy orders. When a man is in a 
fair way and sees all life open in front of him, 
he seems to himself to make a very important 
figure in the world. His horse whinnies to 
him ; the trumpets blow and the girls look out of 
window as he rides into town before his company ; 
lie receives many assurances of trust and regard 
— sometimes by express in a letter — sometimes 
face to face, with persons of great consequence 
falling on his neck. It is not wonderful if his 
head is turned for a time. But once he is dead, 

l Possessions which by the feudal arrangement of things Denis 
cle Beaulieu held of some greater noble. 


218 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


were he as brave as Hercules or as wise as Soke 
moil, he is soon forgotten. It is not ten years 
since my father fell, with many other knights 
around him, in a very fierce encounter, and I do 
not think that any one of them, nor so much as 
the name of the fight, is now remembered. No, 
no, madam, the nearer you come to it, you see 
that death is a dark and dusty corner, where a 
man gets into his tomb and has the door shut 
after him till the judgment day. I have few 
friends just now, and once I am dead I shall have 
none.” 

44 Ah, Monsieur de Beaulieu ! ” she exclaimed, 
“you forget Blanche de Mal^troit.” 

“ You have a sweet nature, madam, and you are 
pleased to estimate a little service far bevond its 
worth.” 

44 It is not that,” she answered. 44 You mistake 
me if you think I am easity touched by my own 
concerns. I say so, because you are the noblest 
man I have ever met ; because I recognize in 
you a spirit that would have made even a com¬ 
mon person famous in the land.” 

44 And yet here I die in a mouse trap — with no 
more noise about it than my own squeaking,” 
answered he. , 

A look of pain crossed her face, and she was 
silent for a little while. Then a light came into 
her eyes, and with a smile she spoke again. 

44 1 cannot have my champion think meanly of 


EXGLISn STORIES 


219 


himself. Any one who gives his life for another 
will be met in paradise by all the heralds and 
angels of the Lord God. And you have no such 
cause to hang your head. For . . . pray, do 
yon think me beautiful ? ” she asked, with a deep 
flush. • 

“ Indeed, madam, I do,” he said. 

“ I am glad of that,” she answered heartily. 
“ Do you think there are many men in France 
who have been asked in marriage by a beautiful 
maiden — with her own lips — and who have 
refused her to her face ? I know you men would 
half despise such a triumph ; but believe me, we 
women know more of what is precious in love. 
There is nothing that should set a person higher 
in his own esteem ; and we women would prize 
nothing more dearly.” 

“You are very good,” he said; “but you can¬ 
not make me forget that I was asked in pity and 
not for love.” 

“ I am not so sure of that,” she replied, holding 
down her head. “ Hear me to an end, Monsieur de 
Beaulieu. I know how you must despise me ; I 
feel you are right to do so ; I am too poor a 
creature to occupy one thought of your mind, 
although, alas ! you must die for me this morn¬ 
ing. But when I asked you to marry me, indeed 
and indeed it was because I respected and admired 
you and loved you with my whole soul, from the 
very moment that you took my part against my 


220 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


uncle. If you had seen yourself, and how noble 
you looked, you would pity rather than despise 
me. And now,” she went on, hurriedly check¬ 
ing him with her hand, “although I have laid 
aside all reserve and told you so much, remember 
that I know your sentiments toward me already. 
I would not, believe me, being nobly born, weary 
you with importunities into consent. I, too, have 
a pride of my own ; and I declare before the holy 
mother of God, if you should now go back from 
your word already given, I would no more marry 
you than 1 would marry my uncle’s groom.” 

Denis smiled a little bitterly. 

“It is a small love,” he said, “ that shies at a 
little pride.” 

She made no answer, although she probably had 
her own thoughts. 

“ Come hither to the window,” he said with a 
sigh. “ Here is the dawn.” 

And indeed the dawn was already beginning. 
The hollow of the sky was full of essential day¬ 
light, colorless and clean ; and the valley Under¬ 
neath was flooded with a gray reflection. A few 
thin vapors clung in the coves of the forest or 
lay along the winding course of the river. The 
scene disengaged a surprising effect of stillness, 
which was hardly interrupted when the cocks 
began once more to crow among the steadings. 1 
Perhaps the same fellow who had made so horrid 

1 A Scotch word for barns and out-houses. 


ENGLISH STORIES 


221 


a clangor in the darkness not half an hour be¬ 
fore, now sent up the merriest cheer to greet the 
coming day. A little wind went bustling and 
eddying among the treetops underneath the 
windows. And still the daylight kept flooding 
insensibly out of the east, which was soon to 
grow incandescent and cast up that red-hot 
cannon ball, the rising sun. 

Denis looked out over all this with a bit of a 
shiver. He had taken her hand and retained it 
in his almost unconsciously. 

“ Has the day begun already ? ” she said; and 
then, illogically enough, “the night has been so 
long ! Alas! what shall we say to my uncle when 
he returns ? ” 

“ What you will,” said Denis, and he pressed 
her fingers in his. 

She was silent. 

“ Blanche,” he said, with a swift, uncertain, pas¬ 
sionate utterance, “you have seen whether I fear 
death. You must know well enough that 1 would 
as gladly leap out of that window into the empty 
air as to lay a finger on you without your free and 
full consent. But if you care for me at all do not 
let me lose my life in a misapprehension; for I 
love you better than the whole world ; and though 
I will die for you blithely, it would be like all the 
joys of paradise to live on and spend my life in 
your service.” 

As he stopped speaking, a bell began to ring 


222 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


loudly in the interior of the house; and a clatter 
of armor in the corridor showed that the retainers 
were returning to their post, and the two hours 
were at an end. 

“After all that you have heard?” she whis¬ 
pered, leaning toward him with her lips and eyes. 

“I have heard nothing,” he replied. 

“ The captain’s name was Florimond de Champ- 
divers,” she said in his ear. 

“ I did not hear it,” he answered, taking her 
supple body in his arms, and covering her wet 
face with kisses. 

A melodious chirping was audible behind, f#l- 
l#wed by a beautiful chuckle, and the voice of 
Messire de Maletroit wished his new nephew a 
good-morning. 


WEE WILLIE WINKIE 


BY RUDYARD KIPLING 

“ An officer and a gentleman.” 

His full name was Percival William Williams, 
but he picked up the other name in a nursery 
book, and that was the end of the christened 
titles. His mother’s ayah 1 called him Willie- 
Baha , 2 but as he never paid the faintest attention^ 
to anything that the ayah said, her wisdom did 
not help matters. 

x L ' ; 

His father was the Colonel of the 195th, and as" 

soon as Wee Willie Winkie was old enough to 
understand what Military Discipline meant, Colo¬ 
nel Williams put him under it. There was no 
other way of managing the child. When he was 
good for a week, he drew good-conduct pay ; and 
when he was bad, he was deprived of his good- 
conduct stripe. Generally he was bad, for India 
offers so many chances to little six-year-olds of 
going wrong. 

1 Nurse. The word is picked up from the natives by the Eng¬ 
lish in India, although, curiously enough, it is a word of European 
origin. 

2 An Oriental title of respect. 

223 


224 


IIA WTU OUNE CL A SSICS 


Children resent familiarity from strangers, and 
Wee Willie Winkie was a very particular child. 
Once he accepted an acquaintance, he was gra¬ 
ciously pleased to thaw. He accepted Brandis, 
a subaltern 1 of the 195th, on sight. Brandis was 
having tea at the Colonel’s, and Wee Willie Win¬ 
kie entered strong in the possession of a good- 
conduct badge won for not chasing the hens 
round the compound. 2 He regarded Brandis 
with gravity for at least ten minutes, and then 
delivered himself of his opinion. 

“ I like you,” said he, slowly, getting off his 
chair and coming over to Brandis. “ I like you. 
I shall call you Coppy, because of your hair. Do 
you mind being called Coppy ? it is because of ve 
hair you know.” 

Here was one of the most embarrassing of Wee 
Willie Winkie’s peculiarities. He would look at 
a stranger for some time, and then, without warn¬ 
ing or explanation, would give him a name. And 
the name stuck. No regimental penalties could 
break Wee Willie Winkie of this habit. He lost 
his good-conduct badge for christening the Com¬ 
missioner’s 3 wife “ Pobs ” ; but nothing that the 
Colonel could do made the Station 4 forego the 
nickname, and Mrs. Collen remained Mrs. “ Pobs ” 

1 A commissioned officer below the rank of captain. 

2 The inclosure around the house. 

3 The chief civil officer in a district of India. 

4 One of the places in India where the executive officers of 
government have headquarters. 


ENGLISH STORIES 


225 


till the end of lier stay. So Brandis was chris¬ 
tened 44 Coppy,” and rose, therefore, in the esti¬ 
mation of the regiment. 

If Wee Willie Winkie took an interest in any 
one, the fortunate man was envied alike by the 
mess and the rank and file. And in their envy lay 
no suspicion of self-interest. 44 The Colonel’s son ” 
was idolized on his own merits entirely. Yet 
Wee Willie Winkie was not lovely. His face 
was permanently freckled, as his legs were per¬ 
manently scratched, and in spite of his mother’s 
almost tearful remonstrances he had insisted upon 
having his long yellow locks cut short in the 
military fashion. 44 1 want my hair like Sergeant 
Tummil’s,” said Wee Willie Winkie, and, his 
father abetting, the sacrifice was accomplished. 

Three weeks after the bestowal of his youthful 
affections on Lieutenant Brandis — henceforward 
to be called 44 Coppy ” for the sake of brevity — 
Wee Willie Winkie was destined to behold 
strange things and far beyond his comprehension. 

Coppy returned his liking with interest. Coppy 
had let him wear for five rapturous minutes his 
own big sword — just as tall as Wee Willie 
Winkie. Coppy had promised him a terrier 
puppy ; and Coppy had permitted him to witness 
the miraculous operation of shaving. Nay, more 
— Coppy had said that even he, Wee Willie 
Winkie, would rise in time to the ownership of a 
box of shiny knives, a silver soap box and a silver- 


226 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


handled “sputter-brush,” as Wee Willie Winkle 
called it. Decidedly, there was no one except 
his father, who could give or take away good-con¬ 
duct badges at pleasure, half so wise, strong, and 
valiant as Coppy with the Afghan and Egyptian 
medals on his breast. Why, then, should Coppy 
be guilty of the unmanly weakness of kissing — 
vehemently kissing : — a “ big girl,” Miss Allardyce 
to wit, in the course of a morning ride? Wee 
Willie Winkie had seen Coppy so doing, and, like 
the gentleman he was, had promptly wheeled 
round and cantered back to his groom lest the 
groom should also see. 

Under ordinary circumstances he would have 
spoken to his father, but he felt instinctively that 
this was a matter on which Coppy ought first to 
be consulted. 

“Coppy,” shouted Wee Willie Winkie, reining 
up outside that subaltern’s bungalow early one 
morning 1 — “ I want to see you, Coppy ! ” 

“ Come in, young ’un,” returned Coppy, who 
was at early breakfast in the midst of his dogs. 
“ What mischief have you been getting into 
now ? ” 

Wee Willie Winkie had done nothing noto¬ 
riously bad for three days, and so stood on a pin¬ 
nacle of virtue. 

“ I’ve been doing nothing bad,” said lie, curling 

1 It is so hot in India that people have to get their exercise very 
early in the day. 


ENGLISH STORIES 


227 


himself into a long chair with a studious affecta¬ 
tion of the Colonel’s languor after a hot parade. 
He buried his nose in a teacup and, with eyes 
staring roundly over the rim, asked“ I say, 
Coppy, is it pwoper to kiss big girls ? ” 

“By Jove ! You’re beginning early. Who do 
you want to kiss ? ” 

“No one. ^Aly muvver’s always kissing me if I 
don’t stop her. If it isn’t pwoper, how was you 
kissing Major Allardyce’s big girl last morning, 
by ve canal ? ” 

Coppy’s brow wrinkled. He and Miss Allardyce 
had with great craft managed to keep their engage¬ 
ment secret for a fortnight. There' were urgent 
and imperative reasons why Major Allardyce 
should not know how matters stood for at least 
another month, and this small marplot had dis¬ 
covered a great deal too much. 

“I saw you,” said Wee Willie Winkie, calmly. 
“But ve groom didn’t see. I said, 4 Hut jao .’” 1 

“ Oh, you had that much sense, you young Rip,” 
groaned poor Coppy, half amused and half angry. 
“ And how many people may you have told about 
it?” 

“ Only me myself. You didn’t tell when I 
twied to wide ve buffalo ven my pony was lame ; 
and I fought you wouldn’t like.” 

“ Winkie,” said Coppy, enthusiastically, shaking 
the small hand, 44 you’re the best of good fellows. 

1 Here, as on p. 235, jao means “ stop.” 


228 


11A !vrHORNE CLASSICS 


Look here, you can’t understand all these things. 
One of these days —- hang it, how can I make you 
see it ! — I’m going to marry Miss Allardyce, and 
then she’ll be Mrs. Coppy, as you say. If your 
young mind is so scandalized at the idea of kiss¬ 
ing big girls, go and tell your father.” 

44 What will happen ? ” said Wee Willie Winkie, 
who firmly believed that his father was omnipotent. 

44 1 shall get into trouble,” said Coppy, playing 
his trump card with an appealing look at the 
holder of the ace. 

44 Veil I won’t,” said Wee Willie Winkie, briefly. 

\ 0 44 But my faver says its un-man-ly to be always 

kissing, and I didn’t fink youd do vat, Coppy.” 

44 I’m not always kissing, old chap. It’s only 
now and then, and when you’re bigger you’ll do 
it too. Your father meant it’s not good for little 
boys.” 

44 Ah ! ” said Wee Willie Winkie, now fully 
enlightened. 44 It’s like ve sputter-brush ? ” 

44 Exactly,” said Coppy, gravely. 

44 But I don’t fink I’ll ever want to kiss big girls, 
nor no one, ’eept my muvver. And I must do 
vat, you know.” 

There was a long pause, broken by Wee Willie 
Winkie. 

44 Are you fond of vis big girl, Coppy ? ” 

44 Awfully ! ” said Coppy. 

44 Fonder van you are of Bell or ve Butcha — 
or me ? ” 


ENGLISH STORIES 


229 


i 

“It’s in a different way,” said Coppy. ‘You 
see, one of these days Miss Allardyce will belong 
to me, but you’ll grow up and command the Regi¬ 
ment and — all sorts of things. It’s quite differ¬ 
ent, you see.” 

“Very well,” said Wee Willie Winkie, rising. 
“ If you’re fond of ve big girl, I won’t tell any 
one. I must go now.” 

Coppy rose and escorted liis small guest to the 
door, adding : “ You’re the best of little fellows, 
Winkie. 1 tell you what. In thirty days from 
now you can tell if you like — tell any one you 
like.” 

Thus the secret of the Brandis-Allardyce engage¬ 
ment was dependent on a little child’s word. 
Coppy, who knew Wee Willie Winkie’s idea of 
truth, was at ease, for he felt that he would not 
break promises. Wee Willie Winkie betrayed a 
special and unusual interest in Miss Allardyce, 
and, slowly revolving round that embarrassed 
young huty, was used to regard her gravely with 
unwinking eye. He was trying to discover why 
Coppy should have kissed her. She was not half 
so nice as his own mother. On the other hand, 
she was Coppy’s property, and would in time 
belong to him. Therefore it behooved him to 
treat her with as much respect as Coppy’s big 
sword or shiny pistol. 

The idea that he shared a great secret in common 
with Coppy kept Wee Willie Winkie unusually 


280 


HA 1 VTIIORXE CL A SSICS 


virtuous for three weeks. Then the Old Adam 
broke out, and he made what he called a “ camp 
fire ” at the bottom of the garden. IIow could he 
have foreseen that the flying sparks would have 
lighted the Colonel’s little hayrick and consumed 
a week’s store for the horses ? Sudden and swift 
was the punishment — deprivation of the good- 
conduct badge and, most sorrowful of all, two 
days confinement to barracks—the house and 
veranda — coupled with the withdrawal of the 
light of his father’s countenance. 

He took the sentence like the man he strove to 
be, drew himself up witli a quivering underlip, 
saluted, and, once clear of the room, ran to weep 
bitterly in his nursery — called by him “my quar¬ 
ters.” Coppy came in the afternoon and attempted 
to console the culprit. 

“I’m under awwest,” said Wee Willie Winlde 
mournfully, “and I didn’t ought to speak to you.” 

Very early the next morning he climbed on to 
the roof of the house — that was not forbidden — 
and beheld Miss Allardyce going for a ride. 

“'Where are you going?” cried Wee Willie 
Winkie. 

“ Across the river,” she answered, and trotted 
forward. 

Now the cantonment 1 in which the 195th lay 
was bounded on the north by a river — dry in the 
winter. From his earliest years, Wee Willie 
1 A place where soldiers are quartered. 


ENGLISH STORIES 


231 


Winkie had been forbidden to go across the river, 
and had noted that even Coppy — the almost 
almighty Coppy—had never set foot beyond it. 

W ee Willie Winkie had once been read to, out of// O u 
a big blue book, the history of the Princess and 
the Goblins 1 — a most wonderful tale of a land 
where the Goblins were always warring with the 
children of men until they were defeated by one 
Curdie. Ever since that date it seemed to him 
that the bare black and purple hills across the 
river were inhabited by Goblins, and, in truth, 
every one had said that there lived the Bad Men. 2 
Even in his own house the lower halves of the 
windows were covered with green paper on account 
of the Bad Men who might, if allowed clear view, 

.fire into peaceful drawing-rooms and comfortable 
bedrooms. Certainly, beyond the river, which 
was, the end of all the Earth, lived the Bad Men. 

And here was Major Allardyce’s big girl, Coppy’s 
property, preparing to venture into their borders ! 

What would Coppy say if anything happened to 
her ? If the Goblins ran off with her as they did 
with Curdie’s Princess ? She must at all hazards 
be turned back. 

The house was still. Wee Willie Winkie ' 
reflected for a moment on the very, terrible 
wrath of his father ; and then —• broke his arrest! 

1 By George MacDonald. 

2 They were Patlians, of an Afghan tribe on the northwest 
border of British India. 



232 


BA WTBOUNE CLASSICS 


It-was a crime unspeakable. The low sun threw 
his shadow, very large and very black, on the 
trim garden-paths, as he went down to the stables 
and ordered his pony. It seemed to him in the 
hush of the dawn that all the big world had been 
bidden to stand still and look at Wee Willie Winkie 
guilty of mutiny. The drowsy sais 1 gave him 
his mount, and, since the one great sin made all 
others insignificant, Wee Willie Winkie said that 
he was going to ride over to Coppy Sahib , 2 and 
went out at a footpace, stepping on the soft 
mold of the flower borders. 

The devastating track of the pony’s feet was the 
last misdeed that cut him off from all sympathy of 
Humanity. He turned into the road, leaned for¬ 
ward, and rode as fast as the pony could put foot 
to the ground in the direction of the river. 

But the liveliest of twelve-two ponies can do 
little against the long canter of a Waler . 3 Miss 
Allardyce was far ahead, had passed through the 
crops, beyond the Police-post, when all the guards 
were asleep, and her mount was scattering the 
pebbles of the river bed as Wee Willie Winkie 
left the cantonment and British India behind him. 
Bowed forward and still flogging, Wee Willie 
Winkie shot into Afghan territory, and could just 
see Miss Allardyce, a black speck, flickering across 
the stony plain. The reason of her wandering 

1 Groom. 

2 A title of respect, generally used in India for the English. 

3 An Australian horse, called from New South Wales. 


ENGLISH STORIES 


233 


was simple enough. Coppy, in a tone of too 
hastily assumed authority, had told her over night 
that she must not ride out by the river. And she 
had gone to prove her own spirit and teach Coppy 
a lesson. 

Almost at the foot of the inhospitable hills, Wee 
Willie Winkie saw the Waler blunder and come 
down heavily. Miss Allardyce struggled clear, 
but her ankle had been severely twisted, and she 
could not stand. Having thus demonstrated her 
spirit, she wept copiously, and was surprised by 
the apparition of a white, wide-eyed child in khaki, 
on a nearly spent pony. 

“Are you badly, badly hurted?” shouted Wee 
Willie Winkie, as soon as he was within range. 
“You didn’t ought to be here.” 

“I don’t know,” said Miss Allardyce, ruefully, 
ignoring the reproof. “ Good gracious, child, what 
are you doing here ? ” 

“ You said you was going acwoss ve wiver,” 
panted Wee Wille Winkie, throwing himself off 
his pony. “And nobody — not even Coppy — 
must go acwoss ve wiver, and I came after you 
ever so hard, but you wouldn’t stop, and now 
you’ve hurted yourself, and Coppy will be angwy 
wiv me, and — I’ve bwoken my awwest! I’ve 
bwoken my awwest! ” 

The future Colonel of the 195th sat down and 
sobbed. In spite of the pain in her ankle the girl 
was moved. 


234 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


“Have yon ridden all the way from canton¬ 
ments, little man ? What for ? ” 

“ You belonged to Coppy. Coppy told me so ! ” 
wailed Wee Willie Winkle, disconsolately. “ I 
saw him kissing you, and he said he was fonder of 
you van Bell or ve Butclia or me. And so I came. 
You must get up and come back. You didn’t 
ought to be here. Vis is a bad place, and I’ve 
bwoken my awwest.” 

“ I can’t move, Winkie,” said Miss Allardyce, 
with a groan. “ I’ve hurt my foot. What shall 
I do ? ” 

She showed a readiness to weep afresh, which 
steadied Wee Willie Winkie, who had been 
brought up to believe that tears were the depth of 
unmanliness. Still, when one is as great a sinner 
as Wee Willie Winkie, even a man may be permit¬ 
ted to break down. 

“ Winkie,” said Miss Allardyce, “ when you’ve 
rested a little, ride back and tell them to send out 
something to carry me back in. It hurts fear¬ 
fully.” 

The child sat still for a little time and Miss 
Allardyce closed her eyes ; the pain was nearly 
making her faint. She was roused by Wee 
Willie Winkie tying up the reins on his pony’s 
neck and setting it free with a vicious cut of his 
whip that made it whicker. The little animal 
headed towards the cantonments. 

“ Oh, Winkie ! What are you doing ? ” 


ENGLISH STORIES 


235 


“Husli! ” said Wee Willie Winkie. “Yere’s 
a man coming — one of vejBad Men. I must stay 
wiv you. My faver says a man must always look 
after a girl. Jack will go home, and ven vey’ll 
come and look for us. Vat’s why I let him go.” 

Not one man but two or three had appeared from 
behind the rocks of the hills, and the heart of 
Wee Willie Winkie sank within him, for just in 
this manner were the Goblins wont to steal out 
and vex Curdie’s soul. Thus had they played in 
Curdie’s garden, he had seen the picture, and thus 
had they frightened the Princess’s nurse. He 
heard them talking to each other, and recognized 
with joy the bastard Pushto 1 that he had picked 
up from one of his father’s grooms lately dismissed. 
People who spoke that tongue could not be the 
Bad Men. They were only natives after all. 

They came up to the bowlders on which Miss 
Allardyce’s horse had blundered. 

Then rose from the rock Wee Willie Winkie, 
child of the Dominant Race, aged six and three- 
quarters, and said briefly and emphatically u Jao!” 
The pony had crossed the river bed. 

The men laughed, and laughter from natives was 
the one thing Wee Willie Winkle could not toler¬ 
ate. He asked them what they wanted and why 
they did not depart. Other men with most evil 
faces and crooked-stocked guns crept out of the 
shadows of the hills, till, soon, Wee Willie Winkie 

1 The Afghan language. 


236 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


was face to face with an audience some twenty 
strong. Miss Allardyce screamed. 

“ Who are you ? ” said one of the men. 

“ I am the Colonel Sahib’s son, and my order 
is that you go at once. You black men are fright¬ 
ening the Miss Sahib. One of you must run into 
cantonments and take the news that the Miss 
Sahib has hurt herself, and, that the Colonel’s son 
is here with her.” 

“ Put our feet into the trap ? ” was the laughing 
reply. “ Hear this boy’s speech ! ” 

“ Say that I sent you — I, the Colonel’s son. 
They will give you.money.” 

“ What is the use of this talk ? Take up the 
child and the girl, and we can at least ask for the 
ransom. Ours are the villages on the heights,” 
said a voice in the background. 

These were the Bad Men — worse than Goblins 
— and it needed all Wee Willie Winkie’s training 
to prevent him from bursting into tears. But he 
felt that to cry before a native, excepting only his 
mother’s ayah , would be an infamy greater than 
any mutiny. Moreover, he, as future Colonel 
of the 195th, had that grim regiment at his 
back. 

“Are you going to carry us away?” said Wee 
Willie Winkie, very blanched and uncomfortable. 

“Yes, my little Sahib Bahadur," 1 said the 
tallest of the men, “and eat you afterwards.” 

1 A title of respect. 


ENGLISH STOlilES 


237 


“ That is child’s talk,” said Wee Willie Winkie. 
“Men do not eat men.” 

A yell of laughter interrupted him, but he went 4 
on firmly, — “ And if you do parry us away, I tell 
you that all my regiment will come up in a day 
and kill you all without leaving one. Who will 
take my message to the Colonel Sahib ? ” 

Speech in any vernacular — and Wee Willie 
Winkie had a colloquial acquaintance with three 
— was easy to the boy who could not yet manage 
his “ r’s ” and “ th’s ” aright. 

Another man joined the conference, crying — 

“ O foolish men! What this babe says is true. 
He is the heart’s heart of those white troops. 
For the sake of peace let them go both, for if he 
be taken, the regiment will break loose and gut 
the valley. Our villages are in the valley, and 
we shall not escape. That regiment are devils. 
They broke Khoda Yar’s breastbone with kicks 
when he tried to take the rifles; and if we touch 
this child they will fire and rape and plunder for 
a month, till nothing remains. Better to send a 
man back to take the message and get a reward. 

I say that this child is their God, and that they 
will spare none of us, nor our women, if we harm 
him.” 

It was Din Mahommed, the dismissed groom 
of the Colonel, who made the diversion, and an 
angry and heated discussion followed. Wee 
Willie Winkie, standing over Miss Allardyce, 


238 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


waited the upshot. Surely his “ wegiment,” his 
own “wegiment,” would not desert him if they 
knew of bis extremity. 

* * * * * * 

The riderless pony brought the news to the 
195th, though there had been consternation in 
the Colonel’s household for an hour before. The 
little beast came in through the parade-ground in 
front of the main barracks, where the men were 
settling down to play Spoil-five till the afternoon. 
Devlin, the color Sergeant of E Company, glanced 
at the empty saddle and tumbled through the 
barracks-rooms, kicking up each Room Corporal 
as he passed, “ Up, ye beggars ! There’s some¬ 
thing happened to the Colonel’s son,” he shouted. 

“ He couldn’t fall off ! S’elp me ’e couldn't fall 
off,” blubbered a drummer-boy. 

“ Go an’ hunt acrost the river. He’s over there 
if lie’s anywhere, an’ maybe those Pathons have 
got ’im. For the loye o’ Gawd don’t look for ’im 
in the nullahs ! 1 Let’s go over the river.” 

“ There’s sense in Mott yet,” said Devlin. “ E 
Company, double out to the river — sharp ! ” 

So E Company, in its shirt sleeves mainly, 
double for the dear life, and in the rear toiled 
the perspiring Sergeant, adjuring it to double 
yet faster. The cantonment was alive with the 
men of the 195th hunting for Wee Willie Winkie, 
and the Colonel finally overtook E Company, 

1 Dry ravines. 


ENGLISH STOGIES 


239 


far too exhausted to swear, struggling in the 
pebbles of the river bed. 

Up the hill under which Wee Willie Winkie’s 
Bad Men were discussing the wisdom of carrying 
off the child and the girl, a lookout fired two shots. 

“ What have I said ! ” shouted Din Mahommed. 
“ There is the warning ! The pulton are out 
already and are coming across the plain ! Get 
away ! Let us not be seen with the boy.” 

The men waited for an instant, and then, as 
another shot was fired, withdrew into the hills, 
silently as they had appeared. 

“The wegiment is coming,” said Wee Willie 
Winkie, confidently, to Miss Allardyce, “and it’s 
all wight. Don’t cwy ! ” 

He needed the advice himself, for ten minutes 
later, when his father came up, he was weeping 
bitterly, with his head in Miss Allardyce’s lap. 

And the men of the 195th carried him home 
wdth shouts and rejoicings ; and Coppy, who had 
ridden a horse into a lather, met him, and, to his 
intense disgust, kissed him openly in the presence 
of The men. 


But there was balm for his dignity. His father 
assured him that not only would the breaking of 
arrest be condoned, but that the good-conduct 
badge would be restored as soon as his mother 
could sew it on his blouse-sleeve. Miss Allardyce 
had told the Colonel a story that made him proud 
of his son. 


240 


HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 


“ She belonged to you, Coppy,” said Wee Willie 
Winkie, indicating Miss Allardyce with a grimy 
forefinger. “ I knew she didn’t ought to go acwoss 
ye wiver, and I knew ve wegirnent would come to 
me if I sent Jack home.” 

“You’re a hero, Winkie,” said Coppy — “a 
pukka hero ! ” 

“I don’t know what vat means,” said Wee Willie 
Winkie, “ but you mustn’t call me Winkie, any no 
more. I’m Percival Will’am Will’ams.” 

And in this manner did Wee Willie Winkie 
enter into his manhood. 


i 


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,11 

DEC 30 1903 































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